Amazon covers an area of 7,584,421 km2, comprising Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.
Originally, it was occupied by Indigenous groups and native species belonging to the flora and fauna of South America.
The civilizing process of these Indigenous communities began from the European colonial occupation in the late 18th century, with the foundation of Christian missions, whose purpose was to civilize and catechize the populations that inhabited the riverside areas of the Amazon Basin. At the time of catechesis, there were many conflicts between settlers and natives, which caused the extinction and escape of many communities to the interior of the region.
Scientists, ethnologists, and ethnographers who study the region since the beginning have recorded the existence of thousands of Indigenous ethnic groups, who occupied and still occupy the territorial areas of the countries of South America, which differ in their cultural aspects, uses, customs, and language.
The Brazilian Amazon includes the states of Pará, Amazonas, Maranhão, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Acre, Amapá, Rondônia, and Roraima. There are 5,033,072 km2 of forests, lands, and waters, equivalent to 5% of the world’s biodiversity and more than 66% of the entire Amazon.
Continuous forests cover about 3,650,000 km2, which corresponds to 15% of the total terrestrial plant biological mass, forming a balanced and self-sufficient ecosystem, which transforms and reabsorbs everything that dies in it. As is the case of trees that, at the same time as they break down from the soil and fall, several species of small plants soon emerge from the sludge, contributing to the wide variety of ancient trees, ranging from 40 to 300 different species per hectare.
Currently, the biodiversity of the Amazon Forest reaches about 5,000 species of trees with more than 15cm in diameter. In it, the ecosystem interacts in the face of constant environmental changes, favoring the preservation of fauna and flora, promoting the perfect balance between living beings and the environment.
Typical examples of this natural phenomenon are the reforestation that occurs through the debris of birds and the contribution of fish, inhabitants of the Amazon River, which in addition to being part of the marine fauna, play an important role in forest preservation in the rainy season, when trees are submerged for many months. They feed on its fruits and deposit the seeds in other places, where soon new plants will emerge. With the trunk of trees, roots, and mushrooms that agglomerate under the forest soil, there is osmosis, which is the process of filtering the organic and inorganic nutrients contained in the rainwater, preventing them from flowing into the rivers and seas.
The Amazonian fauna is considered one of the largest reserves of living biomass on the planet. It is estimated there are about 6,000 species of mammals, birds, fish, insects, worms, rats, protozoa, bacteria, and fungi.
The Amazon basin is characterized by numerous rivers and streams. Its main river is the Amazon, whose width ranges from four to five kilometers, measuring in some stretches up to 10 kilometers in length. This is the longest and largest river in the world by volume of water. Born on the Yarupa glacier in Peru at an altitude of 5,000 meters, the river runs for about 6,577 km. During this journey, it is named Marañon. When it enters the Brazilian territory, it is called the Solimões River and when it meets the Negro River, it is named Amazon. Before meeting the Atlantic Ocean, it receives water from more than a 1,000 tributaries, forming the largest and most complex hydrographic network in the world, with about 6,000,000 km2.
Although there are clauses in the Federal Constitution that regulate the exploitation of renewable natural resources in the Amazon within the legal standards of an environmental policy, using modern technologies, the practices of extraction of ores, vegetables (deforestation), fishing, and predatory hunting have been practiced abusively over the years. The native inhabitants, the squatters. and large entrepreneurs, using rudimentary techniques that cause serious problems to the environment, destroy biodiversity, causing imbalance in the world ecosystem and negatively affecting the quality of life of the inhabitants of the region.
For some decades, the Amazon has become a universal attraction for Brazilians and foreigners, not only because of the extreme natural beauty of the fauna and flora that inhabits it, but also because of the need for urgent political intervention in socio-environmental management, to preserve and to guarantee sustainability, non-renewable natural resources, biodiversity and the quality of life of the peoples of the planet.
Recife, March 30, 2004.
sources consulted
FURTADO, Lourdes Gonçalves. Amazônia: desenvolvimento, sóciodiversidade e qualidade de vida. Belém: UFPA, 1997. 165 p.
LEONEL, Mauro. A morte social dos rios. São Paulo: Perspectiva; Instituto de Antropologia e Meio Ambiente; Fapesp, 1998. 263 p.
SALATI, Eneas et al. Amazônia: desenvolvimento, integração e ecologia. Sâo Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983. 327 p.
how to quote this text
MACHADO, Regina Coeli Vieira. Amazon. In: PESQUISA Escolar. Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, 2004. Available from: https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/pt-br/artigo/a-amazonia/. Access on: mês dia ano. (Ex.: Aug. 6, 2020).