Gunn, Jamie: Week3, Amazon River

Gunn, Jamie: Week3, Amazon River

https://www.chimuadventures.com/blog/2016/07/amazon-river/

Taking a trip to the Amazon Forest, my family and I were able to experience the Amazon River and some of its glory. This meandering river with its curvy s-like shapes, snakes its way around the Amazon Forest. They say that meandering rivers are associated with flooding, the average usually being every two and a half years, but the Amazon River is known for flooding every single year. It floods so much that it can quadruples its width due to the heavy rainfall from the rainforest. This flooding causes the Amazon floodplain forests to be covered by this water, throughout the basin. This floodplain helps to enrich the land by transferring the sediment, and enriching the soil, as well as bringing new life into those areas for animals to feed on.   

It is known as one of the longest rivers in the world and the largest by how much water is flowing through it, which pours out about 12,540,000 cubic meters every minute. The Amazon once spewed into the Pacific Ocean, but the flow was cut off, changing its trajectory around 65 million years ago, and it now releases into the Atlantic.

References:

·       https://www.chimuadventures.com/blog/2016/07/amazon-river/

·       http://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/about_the_amazon/ecosystems_amazon/floodplain_forests/