9781422278802

• Its total volume is about 75 times greater than the Nile. • It accounts for one-fifth of the world’s total freshwater flow into the ocean. • It is home to at least 10 percent of all living species in the world. • It occupies about 40 percent of the total area of the continent of South America. • Half of the world’s remaining rainforest lies within the Amazon Basin. • During the rainy season the increased flow of water makes the Amazon River more than 30 miles (48.2 km)wide in some points. • One of the islands in theAmazonDelta—the areawhere the river spreads out as it flows into the Atlantic Ocean—is larger than Switzerland.

Because all of these superlatives, nothing says “Brazil” more than the Amazon Basin. More than 80 percent of it lies in Brazil, which is by far the largest country inSouthAmerica and the fifth-largest in the world. It could hold a dozen copies of Texas. Except for Chile and Ecuador, every South American country shares a border with Brazil. It is also one of just 12 countries with territory in both the NorthernandSouthernHemispheres, though most of it is in the Southern Hemisphere. That means that its sea- sons are the opposite of those in the Northern Hemisphere.

Brazil is home to the Amazon rain forest, the largest in the world.

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