Trifter

It covers an area of seven million square kilometres though only 5.5 million square kilometres of this is forest. It is located in nine nations with the majority being in Brazil. It represents over half of the worlds remaining tropical rain forests.

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Climate

Most Rain forests have fairly similar climates and the Amazon is no exception to this.

The Amazon has abundant rainfall most of the year and warm humid temperatures ranging from 20 – 32 degrees Celsius, the humidity is also extremely high staying between 75% and 100% all year long. The temperature differences between day and night are greater than that between seasons. The Amazon extreme weather conditions such as high winds, sudden temperature drops and prolonged drought are very rare; it varies between 150 and 400cm of annual rainfall. The sunlight in the Amazon is an interesting thing because if you live on the forest floor you would probably be in darkness all day; this is because the canopy is so thick that sunlight cannot reach the ground.

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Landforms

The Amazon Rain Forest has many interesting landforms, such as the Amazon basin and the Andes Mountains. The Amazon Basin has an area of over 7,050,000 square meters.  Most of the Amazon Basin has been explored and been put on charts and maps, with over 18,000 plant species being found in the basin. The Andes Mountains are another land form of the Amazon Rain Forest. The Andes stretch right down the west coat of South America through seven different countries. The Amazon rain forest also has many other landforms such as mountainous areas and even some plains which have been cleared of trees by logging companies.  

Amazon River

The Amazon River is the second longest river in the world behind the Nile in Africa.

The Amazon is a natural water body and is fresh water with over 1000 tributaries and 17 of these are over 1000km long. Like all rivers the Amazon drains the lands surface and the Amazon does this very fast moving 207 000m3 of water per second. The Amazon also has multiple drainage basins these are basins which collect water which then travels along streams from highlands to eventually join up with the Amazon.

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The Andes Mountains

The Andes Mountains are a quite common type of mountain and they are a fold mountain. The Andes were formed when two pieces of the Earth’s crust slowly collided and pushed up land to form a mountain range which became the Andes Mountains. The Andes are made up of many different sorts of rock and even have and extra layer of ice and snow on top. The Andes are so long that they are able to be seen from space with the highest peak on Mt. Aconcagua rising 6962m above sea level. The Andes climate varies greatly with the Northern parts having warmish conditions compared to the rest with an average temperature of 18 degrees. While the Southern Section is rainy and cool and the middle quite dry, but if you are climbing up these mountains the conditions will always be cold.

Soil

Over two-thirds of the world’s rain forests and three-fourths of the Amazon rain forest can be called “wet-deserts” in that they grow on red and yellow clay-like soils which are very acidic and low in nutrients. Many tropical forest soils are very old and lacking in nutrients, especially in regions like the Amazon basin where there has been no recent volcanic activity to bring up new nutrients. Amazonian soils are so weathered that they are largely devoid of minerals like phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and magnesium, which come from “rock” sources, but are rich with aluminium oxide and iron oxide, which give the soil its distinctive reddish or yellowish colouration. Under such conditions, one wonders how these poor soils can appear to support such vigorous growth.

The main soil in the rain forest is called Humus. It is a mixture of leaf litter, seeds, fruits, branches and much more natural vegetation. It is because of these nutrients that many trees and plants in the Amazon become shallow rooted, they become shallow rooted because they all try to fight for the same minerals in the same area so they just rely on these nutrients instead of digging deeper in search of other nutrients.

Vegetation

The rain forest has multiple layers ranging from 60m above ground to the forest floor.

The top layer is the emergent layer it consists of the tallest trees and is inhabited by monkeys and bats. The next layer is the canopy which restricts the light to the lower layers and maintains to moist eco-system, inhabited by sloth’s, ants, frogs, parrots and snakes. Next comes the under storey which only has 2.5% of the light that the canopy receives, with limited growth the largest plants are 5m high and it is inhabited by larger animals such as Leopards and Jaguars. The final layer is the forest floor; it is covered in thick leaf litter which forms humus a type of compost for other plants to use to grow. It is inhibited by termites, roaches, beetles and centipedes.    

The Amazon also has many special vegetation features such as:

Vines and Lianas. These wrap themselves around a host tree to climb in search on sunlight; they grow rapidly and eventually kill the host tree.

Buttress Roots. Buttress roots support trees and keep them upright because not all of them can support themselves because of their shallow roots. (See picture on right).

Epiphytes. Epiphytes live in trees and never touch the ground; it is because of this that they have a hard time getting water even when it rains a lot, to overcome this they have succulent roots. They only rely on their host tree for support not for nutrients so they are not a parasite.

Strangler Roots. This plant is a parasite, to survive it lives of a trees sap and will eventually strangle its host as its name suggests.

Ferns and Mosses. These plants all live on the forest floor because unlike most plants they can live without sun and are shade tolerant.

Saprophytes. These plants also live on the forest floor and live ferns and mosses do not require sunlight to grow. This group includes mushrooms, toadstools, and other forms of fungi.

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The Jaguar

The Jaguar is the biggest feline in the Americas and is at the top of the food chain in the Amazon rain forest. The Jaguar has excellent camouflage which it uses to hunt its prey witch is done at night because a jaguars vision is so great it can see in total darkness. Its claws are sharp enough to penetrate turtle shell and t uses these to climb trees which it usually sleeps in. In general a Jaguar is 90cm – 185cm long and weighs anything from 36kg to 160kg. The Jaguar has a rosette pattern with a dark centre on its fur, it has a large muscular hind legs and a broad head. It prefers to live in a watery environment such as swamps and seasonally flooded forest. It mainly hunts large mammals such as deer, tapirs and monkeys but if it has to it can eat reptiles.  If you go on a tour in the Amazon rain forest it is unlikely that you will see a Jaguar but it is highly likely that it will see you and stay hidden.

To survive a Jaguar will use its great camouflage to hide from potential threats such as humans. A Jaguar does not have to worry too much about being eaten by other animals but every now and then another Jaguar will attack it. Other than that a Jaguar is more of a hunter using its camouflage to sneak up on its prey from behind.

Giant Amazon Water Lily

The Giant Amazon Water Lily is native to the Amazon and Brazil and can grow leaves up to 2.43m in diameter and can support up to 136kg of weight evenly distributed. When a new leaf is formed it has no rim but once it grows it will form a 7.5cm – 15cm rim around the edge. 

The flowers of a Water Lily can grow up to 45cm high and are called night blooming fragrant flowers. On the first night they will be white female flowers and then on the second night they will turn into pink male flowers. They survive by being pollinated by Beetles and sphinx moths. The seed pods are the size of a baby’s head and sink below the water’s surface. They only reproduce through seeds which can lay dormant for up to 4 years before germinating.

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The Amazon Rainforest is quite an amazing place with many great natural wonders.