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Amazon Basin

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Central & South American
Geography

   Amazon River basin
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   Amazon River basin

   The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon
   River and its tributaries.

Geographic Studies

   The amazon river basin is located in brazil.The South American rain
   forest of Amazonian (60% located in Brazil), the largest in the world,
   was originally covered by more than 7,000,000 km² (2 million square
   miles) of dense tropical forest. For centuries, this has protected the
   area and the animals residing in it. Forest recession has occurred in
   the past 30 years due to increased industry and population growth
   through road projects, settlement initiatives, and industrial
   development. Dramatic Forest recession is visible via satalite.

Plant life

   Not all of the plant and animal life of Amazonia are known because of
   its hugely unexplored areas. No one knows how many species of fish
   there are in the river either. Dense plant growth because the rainfall
   and regrowth of leaves occur gradually throughout each year. Huge
   Diversity of tree species but usually have smooth, straight trunks and
   large leaves.

Amazonian Indigenous Peoples

   The Amazon Basin includes a diversity of traditional inhabitants as
   well as biodiversity in both flora and fauna. These peoples have lived
   in the rain forest for thousands of years, and their lifestyles and
   cultures are well-adapted to this environment. Contrary to popular
   belief, their subsistence living methods do not significantly harm the
   environment. In the past few decades, the real threat to the Amazon
   Basin has been deforestation and cattle ranching by large transnational
   corporations.

History

   The Amazon basin has been continuously inhabited for over 12,000 years,
   since the first proven arrivals of human beings in South America. Those
   peoples, when found by European explorers in the 16th century, were
   scattered in hundreds of small tribes with no writing system except for
   the part ruled by the Inca Empire. Perhaps as many as 90% of the
   inhabitants died due to European diseases within the first hundred
   years of contact, many tribes perished even before direct contact with
   Europeans, as their germs traveled faster than explorers, contaminating
   village after village.

   Upon the European discovery of America, the Portuguese and the Spanish
   signed the Treaty of Fusillades, dividing the continent into a large
   Spanish western part, which encompassed all of the then unknown North
   America and Central America, and western South America, the Portuguese
   had Eastern South America, what would become modern eastern Brazil.

   By the late 17th century Portuguese/Brazilian explorers had dominated
   much of the Amazon basin because the mouth of the Amazon river lay
   within the Portuguese side, as well as the Brazilian inward exploration
   ventures such as the Bandeiras, which originated in São Paulo and
   conquered much of what is today central Brazil (states of Mato Grosso,
   Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás) and then proceeded to the Amazon. In 1750
   the Treaty of Madrid officialized the transfer of most of the Amazon
   basin and the region of Mato Grosso to the Portuguese side, hugely
   contributing to the continental size of what is now Brazil.

   Brazilian General Rondon is also reckoned as a major 19th century
   explorer of the Amazon as well as a defender of its native poeples, the
   Brazilian state of Rondônia is named after him.

   In 1903 Brazil bought a large portion of northern Bolivia and made it
   its current state of Acre. In 2006 the new socialist Bolivian president
   Evo Morales talked about "getting it back. The Brazilians got it for
   the price of a horse". No action was taken and the two nations remain
   friendly. In the late 19th century, a US-Brazilian joint venture failed
   to implement the Madeira-Mamoré railway, in the state of Rondônia, with
   a huge cost in money and lives.

   Intense deforestation began in the second half of the 20th century,
   population growth and development plans such as the failed Brazilian
   Trans-Amazonian Highway. In the late 1980s the Brazilian Chico Mendes,
   who lived in Acre, became internationally famous for his passionate
   defense of the forest and its people, especially after he was shot dead
   by farmers whose interests he harmed.

Demographics

   The Amazon basin is inhabited by roughly 26 million people, of which 11
   million on the Brazilian side. The two largest cities in the Amazon
   basin are Manaus (1.4 million, the capital of the Brazilian state of
   Amazonas) and Belém (1 million, capital of the Brazilian state of
   Pará).

Cities

   Amazonia is not heavily populated. There are a few cities along the
   Amazon's banks, such as Iquitos, Peru and scattered settlements inland,
   but most of the population lives in cities, such as Manaus in Brazil.
   In many regions, the forest has been cleared for soy bean plantations
   and ranching (the most extensive non-forest use of the land) and some
   of the inhabitants harvest wild rubber latex and Brazil nuts. This is a
   form of extractive farms, where the trees are not cut down, and thus
   this is a relatively sustainable human impact. Over a half of the
   Amazon Basin has been disturbed by human activities with over one fifth
   of the forest being deforested since 1960.

Languages

   The most widely spoken language in the Amazon is Portuguese, followed
   closely by Spanish. On the Brazilian side Portuguese is spoken by at
   least 98% of the population, whilst in the Spanish-speaking countries
   there can still be found a large amount of speakers of Native American
   languages, though Spanish easily predominates.

   There are hundreds of native languages still spoken in the Amazon, most
   of which are spoken by only a handful of people, and thus seriously
   endangered. One of the most widely spoken languages in the Amazon is
   Reengage, which is actually descended from the ancient Tupi language,
   originally spoken in coastal and central regions of Brazil, and brought
   to its present location along the Negro river by Brazilian colonizers,
   which until the mid-18th century used Tupi more than the official
   Portuguese to communicate. Other than modern Reengage, other languages
   of the Tupi Family are spoken there, along with other language families
   like Jê (with its important subbranch Jayapura spoken in the Xingu
   river region and others), Arawak, Karib, Arawá, Yanomamo, Matsés and
   others.

Economy

   Most people in the Amazon region live off fishing and basic
   agriculture, and especially in the southern part of the Brazilian side,
   cattle herding, which is extremely destructive of the forest. One
   important exception is the Zona Franca de Manaus (Free Zone of Manaus),
   created by the Brazilian government in the 1970s to implement light
   industries in the region, mostly electronics and motorcycles. Contrary
   to what might be believed, this light industrialization is very little
   polutive and actually, according to some environmentalists, has helped
   save the rainforest around Manaus by creating job opportunities and
   education, thus driving people away from the heavily damaging
   subsistance and slash-and-burn agriculture.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Basin"
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