Amazon

The Amazon is the largest terrestrial biome on the planet and the largest forest humid tropical world. It occupies about 5.6 million km², divided between nine countries: French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, which has the largest piece of forest (3,4 million square km², occupying approximately 48% national territory).

Various ecosystems interact in the Amazon: 68% of its total area is composed of the moist tropical forest land and the rest is consists of forests of vines, meadows, dry forests, flooded forests, mangrove forests of floodplains, savannas, mainlands fields, fields paddy fields and bamboo forests. There are three types of Amazonian forest: forests land, which have the highest trees, whose tops very nearby prevent the entry of sunlight in the forest, leaving it moist and airless; igapó forest, located in the lower land and formed by species of low branching and dense as the water lily; and lowland forest, a transition type between the first two, the composition of which varies according to the proximity to rivers.

The climate is very humid, with average temperature of 26°C. It is one of the rainiest places in the world: half of the Amazon plain is submerged during the rainy season because the waters rise in average 10m . The great river basin of the Amazon has 1/5 the availability world's fresh water and is covered by the largest rainforest world, corresponding to 1/3 of forest reserves on Earth. It considered also one of the oldest forest canopy stabilized at about 100 million years.

The Amazon fauna is also very diverse. The region comprises half of the species now known birds (about 1,800 species), has the greatest diversity of insects (12 to 18 million), reptiles (475 species) and amphibians (527 species). It has more species of fish than the Atlantic Ocean (3,100 species) and its waters are also rich in crabs, shrimp, snakes, turtles, lizards, dolphins (boto color pink), otters, alligators and sharks. There are over 556 species mammals, especially the 34 endemic species of monkeys of the forest Amazon.