• Key Information

  • Amazon Basin

  • Type
    Drainage Basin
  • Area
    2.4 million square miles
  • Countries
    Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela
  • Learning Point
  • The Amazon Basin is the area in South America that contains the tributaries and rivers of the Amazon River, as well as the area of the Amazon Rainforest. The area contains a vast collection of plants and animals and creates a very special and important environment for our planet.
  • Project
  • Draw the mouth (delta) of the Amazon River.
  • Location
  • Located in
    South America
  • Fun Facts
  • The Amazon Rainforest covers 2.1 million square miles of the 2.4 million square miles that makes up the Amazon Basin.
  • The whole basin area would have flowed west in the past towards the Pacific Ocean, but the Andes mountains changed it to flow east towards the Atlantic.
  • The basin contains the world's second longest river (Amazon River) and the largest rainforest (Amazon Rainforest).
  • Though we expect to find most frogs living in water, the wet and rainy climate of the river basin means most frogs live in the trees.
  • A river delta, or the mouth of the river, usually forms as the river enters the sea, or other slow moving or still water. It's named after the letter 'delta' in the Greek Alphabet: Δ.