Qualla: Amazon biome

Amazon biome: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paolo Costa Baldi, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Amazon River carries roughly 16 percent of all the freshwater that rivers deliver to the oceans. No other river on Earth comes close. And yet the Amazon is not really a single thing. The biome it drains covers 6.7 million square kilometers across nine countries - Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. Nearly half of it sits inside Brazil. Within that expanse the forest changes constantly: terra firma high forest that never floods, várzea floodplains soaked in whitewater silt, igapó flooded forests drowned in blackwater, bamboo groves that flower together every 27 years then die, and at the highest edges, alpine tundra on the flat-topped tepuis of the Venezuelan border.

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Image: Paolo Costa Baldi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Amazon biome: How Many Species Does a Place Hold

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. The rough answer for the Amazon biome is: more than anyone has finished counting. Estimates of plant species range from 30,000 to 60,000, with perhaps half of them endemic to the biome - existing nowhere else. There are 1,400 known species of fish in the Amazon basin, 163 amphibi...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Amazon biome: Black Water and White Water

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gabriel Castaldini, CC BY-SA 3.0. At the Meeting of the Waters outside Manaus, the Rio Negro and the Solimões flow side by side for about six kilometers without mixing. The Rio Negro is nearly jet black - its color comes from tannins released by decomposing leaves in swamps along its margins. It runs clear. The S...

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Image: Gabriel Castaldini | CC BY-SA 3.0

Amazon biome: Soil the Trees Made

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ericatarina, CC BY-SA 3.0. For a rainforest with such staggering biological wealth, the Amazon's soils are surprisingly poor. Most of the basin is ferralsols and acrisols - old, heavily weathered, acidic, and low in nutrients. About 20 percent of the Rio Negro basin is covered by true podzols, sandy soils ...

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Image: Ericatarina | CC BY-SA 3.0

Amazon biome: The Ecosystems, Mapped

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mayra Pavanello Munerato, CC BY-SA 3.0. The biologist J.J. Morrone divided the biome into biogeographical provinces: Guyana, Humid Guyana, Napo, Imeri, Roraima, Amapá, Várzea, Ucayali, Madeira, Tapajós-Xingu, Pará, Yungas, and Pantanal. The World Wildlife Fund's map counts 53 major ecosystems and more than 600 types of...

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Image: Mayra Pavanello Munerato | CC BY-SA 3.0

Amazon biome: What Is Being Eaten Away

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Friedrich Kircher, CC BY 3.0. About 16 percent of the Brazilian Amazon had been deforested by 2006. Between 2006 and 2011 another 45,100 square kilometers fell - most of it in Mato Grosso, Pará, and Rondônia, the three states along what is called the Arc of Deforestation. Cattle pasture accounts for most of t...

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Image: Friedrich Kircher | CC BY 3.0