The Amazon River

The Amazon River

According to several sources, the Amazon River (7,062 kilometres) is the longest in the world, and also the one with the highest discharge. 

The Amazon crosses Peru (headwaters), Colombia and Brazil (mouth). It has more water than the Nile, the Yangtze and the Mississippi rivers together, an amount that represents close to one fifth of the liquid freshwater on Earth.

It has the largest drainage basin in the world, with nearly 7.05 million square kilometres. In fact, the portion of the river's drainage basin in Brazil alone is larger than any other drainage basin on Earth.

In 2010, studies carried out by Brazilian and Peruvian researchers confirmed that, with 7,062 kilometres from the source to the mouth, the Amazon is the world's longest river. The source of the Amazon has been located in the Cordillera Chila mountain range, on the slopes of the Mismi peak (Arequipa, Peru).

The discrepancies concerning the length of the Amazon depend on whether you consider one of the water courses to the south of the Marajó island, at the mouth of the Amazon, to be part of the main river. Until recently, the Nile used to be considered the world's longest river.

The lower Amazon is between 1.6 and 10 kilometres wide, but during the wet season it can span 48 kilometres wide or even more. The river flows into the Atlantic Ocean forming a large estuary that is 240 kilometres wide.

The Amazon river system has more than 1,000 important tributaries: more than 25 of them exceed 1,000 kilometres in length.