Introduction

The Amazon rainforest, a wet broadleaf forest that encompasses the majority of the Amazon basin in South America, covers 2,100,000 square miles. Over half of the rainforest lies in Brazil, with Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, and Suriname close behind. With about 390 billion trees and 16,000 species, the Amazon rainforest is both the biggest and most diverse expanse of rainforest land in the world. The Amazon retains over half the planet's remaining rainforest land, and over nine different nations claim territory throughout the region (12).

Map of the Amazon rainforest
http://sulynzan2012.blogspot.com/2014/09/amazon-rainforest-map.html

The Amazon river, which runs through the rainforest, begins in the Peruvian Andes and goes over the northern half of South America. It collides with the Atlantic in Belem, Brazil, and accounts for 16% of all the world's river water. The main river is 4,080 miles long, and 28 billion gallons of water flow into the Atlantic every minute. The river basin is almost the size of the continental United States, and it covers over 40% of the South American continent (4).

The Amazon river
http://rio.wikia.com/wiki/File:Amazon_river_oxbow.jpg

The name "Amazon" is rumored to have been derived from a war Francisco de Orellana fought with various tribes of South America. Orellana created the name Amazonas based on the mythical Amazons of Asia, which are described in Greek legends (13).