AMAZONIA (AMAZON)

AMAZONIA
“AMAZON” (IN ENGLISH)
BASIN AMAZON
RIVER AMAZON
RAIN FOREST

INTRODUCTION

Just above, a map of the Amazon within Brazilian territory, but remembering that it spans other countries as well, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Colombia, Peru, and Suriname. Just below, a waterway map of the Amazon Basin, prepared by the Ministry of Transport of Brazil.

The Amazon is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin in South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 $km^2$ (square kilometers), of which 5,500,000 $km^2$ are covered by rainforest. This region includes territories belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the forest, followed by Peru with 13%, and smaller portions in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.

The states, provinces, or departments of four neighboring nations of Brazil are named "Amazonas" for this reason.

Also known as the Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Jungle, Equatorial Forest of the Amazon, Rainforest, or Amazonian Hyleia, it represents more than half of the planet's remaining tropical forests and comprises the largest biodiversity in a tropical forest in the world. It is one of the six major Brazilian biomes—or seven biomes, according to some sources—among them the Pantanal, the Cerrado, the Caatinga, the Atlantic Forest, and the Pampa.

In Brazil, for government and economic purposes, the Amazon is delimited by an area called the Legal Amazon, defined following the creation of SUDAM (Superintendency for the Development of the Amazon) in 1966. The biome is also called "Amazonia," which in Brazil occupies 50% of the territory and spans three of the country's five regional divisions: the North, Northeast, and Midwest, being the largest terrestrial biome in the country. An area of 6,000,000 hectares in the center of its hydrographic basin, including the Jaú National Park, was considered a World Heritage Site by the UN (United Nations) in the year 2000.

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS

Just above, an impressive image from the International Space Station over the Amazon, with a large volume of clouds over its territory, something common in the humid months. With a close look, one can notice the Amazon River, from the center of the image to its lower right corner. Just below, another exuberant image of the forest.

The exuberant Amazon is a region with its own biome, very rich in biodiversity, located in northern South America, which includes the entire Amazon Basin, covering lands in Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana, Suriname, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Most of the Amazon is located within Brazil. It is a hyleia, that is, a typically South American equatorial forest, very humid for most of the year. It possesses the equivalent of 1/3 (one third) of the planet's tropical forests, with about 80,000 plant species and 30,000,000 animal species, according to various sources.

The so-called Legal Amazon is defined by geodesic and political criteria, occupying about 50% of Brazilian territory, totaling more than 11,240 kilometers of international borders in South America and comprising the Brazilian states of Amazonas, Pará, Acre, Rondônia, Roraima, Tocantins, Maranhão, and Mato Grosso, occupying more than 5,000,000 $km^2$ of Brazilian territory, with more than 18,000,000 inhabitants in the Amazon region.

During the 1960s, the Brazilian Amazon territory became part of a government settlement policy, including incentives for its exploration. If, on one hand, there was the good intention of the Brazilian Federal Government to use the settlement of that time as a form of economic development for this part of the territory and, consequently, for the entire country, on the other hand, there was an intensification of land disputes, with a variety of conflicts of interest (many of them violent) and uncontrolled, irrational, and predatory deforestation.

There are studies stating that Brazil has deforested about 20% of the Amazon Rainforest since the 1960s and about 60% of the Cerrado, the latter being another important Brazilian biome that is located right next to the Amazon, also occupying a large part of Brazilian territory. According to these studies, there has been a 60% reduction in the populations of fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.

In the past, it was thought that the Amazon Rainforest and other large forests on the planet emitted oxygen during the day through the organic and chemical process of photosynthesis and consumed the same volume or amount of oxygen during the night. In more recent years, it was concluded that, in fact, the Amazon Rainforest and its "cousins" on other continents consume an immense volume of carbon dioxide, with a positive balance of oxygen emission. Since then, the planet's great oceans have ceased to be seen as the only ones largely responsible for the precious oxygen that we humans need so much.

There are studies stating that the Amazon Rainforest consumes between one and ten tons of carbon dioxide per hectare in a year, varying according to the months. The same applies to the Congo Forest in Africa, the Boreal Forest or Taiga in Canada and Russia, and the Temperate Forest in China.

The Amazon Rainforest is responsible for capturing about 1,000,000,000 (one billion) tons of carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) present in the planet's atmosphere every year. In total, it can be stated that all the world's large forests are sequestering around 3,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year.

ETYMOLOGY

Just above, an impressive aerial image of an area of the Amazon Rainforest near the city of Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, the largest Brazilian state. Just below, a typical image of riparian forest from a river in the Amazon region. If you decide to go there for a visit, don't forget to bring insect repellent in spray or lotion to apply to your skin. You will need it, very much.

The name Amazônia derives from the Amazons, fictional female warrior characters from Greek mythology. According to legend, the Amazons belonged to a typically radical and fundamentalist feminist tribe, commanded by Hippolyta, who did not accept men in the group; male children were killed at birth. Thus, the term amazona means a = without, mazôn = center (or breast), in Greek.

When the Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana traveled down the river in search of gold, descending the Andes in 1541, he encountered the Icamiaba indigenous women. The warlike victory of the Icamiabas against the Spanish invaders was so significant that the event was narrated to King Charles V of Habsburg, who, inspired by the Hittite warriors or Amazons, named the river "Amazonas."

Amazonas is the name given by the Greeks to warrior women. The name Amazônia, in the sense of a region, was used for the first time in "O País das Amazonas" (The Country of the Amazons) by Baron Santa Anna Néri in 1899.

HISTORY

The Amazon Rainforest probably formed during the Eocene period. It appeared following a global reduction in tropical temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean, when it had widened enough to provide a warm and humid climate for the Amazon Basin. According to researchers, this tropical forest has existed for at least 55,000,000 (million) years, and most of the region remained free of savanna-type biomes until at least the Ice Age, when the climate was drier and savannas were more widespread.

After the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, the subsequent extinction of the dinosaurs and the wetter climate allowed this tropical forest to spread naturally across the continent. According to researchers, between 65,000,000 and 34,000,000 years ago, the forest extended as far south as the 45th parallel south. Climatic fluctuations during the last 34,000,000 years allowed savanna regions to expand into the tropics. During the Oligocene period, for example, the tropical forest crossed the relatively narrow strip that was mostly above latitude 15° N. It expanded again during the Middle Miocene and then retracted to an inland formation during the Last Glacial Maximum. However, the forest still managed to thrive during these glacial periods, allowing for the survival and evolution of a wide diversity of species.

During the Middle Miocene, it is believed that the Amazon drainage basin was divided along the middle of the continent by the Purus Arch. Water on the eastern side flowed to the Atlantic, while water to the west flowed toward the Pacific through the Amazon Basin. With the rise of the Andes, however, a large basin was created in a closed lake, now known as the Solimões Basin. Within the last 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 years, this accumulation of water breached the Purus Arch, joining into a single flow toward the east into the Atlantic Ocean.

According to researchers, there is evidence of significant changes in the vegetation of the Amazon rainforest over the last 21,000 years through the Last Glacial Maximum and subsequent deglaciation. Analyses of sediment deposits from paleolakes in the Amazon Basin indicate that precipitation in the basin during the Last Glacial Maximum was lower than today, and this was almost certainly associated with reduced moist tropical vegetation cover in the basin.

There is no debate, however, on how extensive this reduction was. Some scientists argue that the rainforest was reduced to small, isolated refugia, separated by open forest and grasslands. Other scientists argue that the rainforest remained largely intact but extended much less to the north, south, and east than is seen today. This debate has proven difficult to resolve because the practical limitations of working in the rainforest mean that data sampling is biased toward the distance from the center of the Amazon basin, and both explanations are reasonably well supported by available data.

AMAZON BASIN
AMAZON RIVER BASIN

The gigantic Amazon Basin, also known as the Amazon River Basin, involves the entire set of water resources—surface and underground—that are related to or converge into the Amazon River, including its main tributaries, the Negro River and the Solimões River. This hydrographic basin is part of the Amazon hydrographic region, one of the hydrographic regions of the Brazilian territory, which, in turn, also possesses other basins, such as the São Francisco Basin, the Paraná Basin, the Tocantins-Araguaia Basin, the Uruguay Basin, and the Paraguay Basin, for example.

In the specific case of the Amazon Basin, it is the largest hydrographic basin in the world, with a total area of more than 7,000,000 $km^2$, responsible for about 1/5 (one fifth) or 20% of the world's total river flow; the water flowing through Amazonian rivers is equivalent to 20% of all liquid fresh water (non-salt water) on Earth.

This hydrographic basin comprises lands in several South American countries, including Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and Bolivia, in addition, of course, to Brazil. It is the largest basin with a mixed regime (pluvial and nival) in the world. A pluvial regime derives from rainwater, and a nival regime derives from the melting of Andean glaciers.

In total, the Amazon River has more than 7,000 tributaries, and the basin has 25,000 kilometers of navigable waterways. Of its total area, about 3,890,000 $km^2$ are located in Brazil—that is, 45% of the country—covering the states of Acre, Amazonas, Roraima, Rondônia, Mato Grosso, Pará, and Amapá.

HUMAN PRESENCE

Just above, geoglyphs on deforested lands in the Amazon Rainforest, in the State of Acre, Brazil, which are assumed to have been made about 1,000 years ago by natives of the region. Just below, a recent image of a contemporary tribe of indigenous people from the Caxinauá Village, direct descendants of Amazon natives.

According to researchers, based on archaeological excavations in the Pedra Pintada Cave, there were already human inhabitants established in the Amazon region about 11,000 years ago. Later development led to late prehistoric settlements along the periphery of the forest by 1250 BC, which induced changes in forest cover.

For a long time, it was thought that the Amazon forest had always been sparsely populated, as it would be impossible to sustain a large population through agriculture due to the poor soil of the region. Archaeologist Betty Meggers, for example, was a major proponent of this idea, as described in her book "Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise." She claimed that a population density of 0.2 inhabitants per square kilometer was the maximum that could be sustained by the rainforest through hunting, with agriculture being necessary to accommodate a larger population.

However, recent anthropological discoveries have suggested that the Amazon region was indeed densely populated. About 5,000,000 people may have lived in the Amazon in the year 1500 AD, divided between dense coastal settlements, such as in Marajó, and inland dwellers. By 1900 AD, the population had fallen to 1,000,000, and in the early 1980s, it was fewer than 200,000 people.

The first European to travel the length of the Amazon River was the Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana in 1542. The BBC program Unnatural Histories presents evidence that Orellana, rather than exaggerating his accounts as previously thought, was correct in his observations that a complex civilization was flourishing along the Amazon in the 1540s. It is believed that the civilization was later devastated by the spread of viral and bacterial diseases from Europe brought by immigrants or colonizers, such as smallpox.

Since the 1970s, several geoglyphs dated between 0 and 1250 AD have been discovered on deforested lands, boosting claims about pre-Columbian civilizations. Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian geographer, is credited with the first discovery of geoglyphs while flying over the state of Acre. The BBC network presented evidence that the Amazon Rainforest, rather than being a virgin jungle, has been shaped by humans for at least 11,000 years through practices such as forest gardening and terra preta (black earth).

Terra preta is distributed over large areas of the Amazon forest and is now widely accepted as a product resulting from soil management by indigenous people. The development of this fertile soil allowed for agriculture and forestry in the formerly hostile environment, which means that much of the Amazon forest is perhaps the result of centuries of human intervention rather than a purely natural process, as had been previously assumed.

In the region of the Xingu tribes, for example, remains of some of these large settlements in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest were found in 2003 by Michael Heckenberger and his colleagues from the University of Florida. Among the findings were evidence of roads, bridges, and large plazas.

GEOGRAPHY

Just above, a satellite image of the Amazon Rainforest. Just below, a simplified world map for easy comparison of the world's main forests, in greenish tones. In South America, the Amazon Rainforest; in Africa, the Congo Forest; in Russia and Canada, the Boreal Forest or Taiga; in China, the Temperate Forest; and in Indonesia, the Indonesian Forest. These are the main forests in the world.

The Amazon is one of the three great forests of the world, one of the main ones. The largest of them is the Siberian Taiga, with a cold climate, a coniferous forest—that is, cone-shaped trees like pines. It is located in Russia and has about 10,000,000 square kilometers.

The Amazon Rainforest has the appearance, seen from above, of a continuous layer of broad canopies located approximately 30 meters above the ground. Most of its 5,000,000 square kilometers, or 42% of Brazilian territory, consists of a forest that never floods, on a plain 130 to 200 meters high, formed by sediments from Lake Belterra, which would have occupied the Amazon Basin between 1,800,000 and 25,000 years ago. At the time the Andes were rising, the rivers carved their beds.

In the Amazon Rainforest, the vegetation is so dense that sunlight often cannot fully reach the ground, failing to pass through the tree canopies. This explains, at least in part, the high degree of humidity in the forest and the immense volume of water vapor released into the atmosphere, produced through the phenomenon of evapotranspiration. This is fundamental for keeping the climate balanced in the Midwest and Southeast regions of Brazil, with regular rainfall throughout most of the year.

Considering all the large forests on the planet, the Amazon has 1/3 (one third) of the total dense forest areas. The term "Legal Amazon" was created in the 1960s by the Brazilian Federal Government to delimit the Amazonian areas of the Brazilian territory. It has levels of vegetation: the so-called igapó forest, permanently flooded, along the rivers, with large trees up to 20 meters high; the várzea forest, flooded in very humid months, where rubber trees, imbaúba, and cocoa trees are present; and the terra firme forest, occupying most of the forest—about 75% of its total area—with trees that reach 50 meters in height.

The Amazon is part of one of the seven Brazilian biomes. In addition to it, there are in Brazil: the Cerrado, which occupies part of the areas of the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, Tocantins, and Maranhão; the Caatinga, which occupies much of the Northeast Region of Brazil; the Atlantic Forest, which occupies part of the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Paraná, and Santa Catarina; the Southern Fields (Pampa), occupying part of the state of Rio Grande do Sul; the Pantanal, occupying part of the states of Mato Grosso do Sul and Mato Grosso; and, finally, the Coastal Biome, occupying relatively narrow strips of the Brazilian coast.

CLIMATE

In the Pleistocene, the climate of the Amazon alternated between cold-dry, hot-humid, and hot-dry. In the last cold-dry phase, about 18,000 or 12,000 years ago, the Amazonian climate was semi-arid, and the maximum humidity occurred 7,000 years ago. In the semi-arid phase, open vegetation formations predominated, such as cerrado and caatinga, with refuges where the forest survived.

Currently, the cerrado subsists in shelters within the forest. Currently, the climate in the Amazon Rainforest is equatorial, hot and humid, due to its proximity to the Equator, with the temperature varying little during the year. Rains are abundant, with average annual precipitation ranging from 1,500 mm to 1,700 mm, and can exceed 3,000 mm at the mouth of the Amazon River and on the coast of Amapá. The rainy season lasts six months.

The Amazon is considered by the scientific community an important piece for the climatic balance in almost all of South America. Part of the air humidity (which later turns into rain) important for the Midwest, South, and Southeast regions of Brazil in several months of the year comes precisely from the Amazon, carried by winds to these regions. The Amazon is important for the balance of the climate in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and even in some regions further north in Argentina.

Furthermore, there is another important environmental and ecological aspect related to the Amazon Rainforest: the phenomenon of photosynthesis, which is an exclusive process of plants, in general, in which they produce their own food from the combination of water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight, with the consequent release of oxygen during the day. In general, the vegetation covers present on most of the continents of the planet we live on contribute to the production of oxygen present in the atmosphere, but the oceans and seas also provide their important share of contribution to oxygen production.

SOIL

Amazonian soil is poor, containing only a thin layer of nutrients closer to the surface. However, the flora and fauna remain alive due to the state of equilibrium reached by the ecosystem, as resource utilization is optimal, with minimal losses. A clear example is the high distribution of mycorrhizae in the soil, which ensure that roots quickly absorb nutrients that flow from the forest with the rains. A layer of decomposing leaves, branches, and dead animals also forms on the soil, quickly converted into nutrients and used before leaching. Such conversion occurs because the fungi found there are saprophytic.

BIODIVERSITY

Just above, a beautiful image: The scarlet macaw (araracanga or arara), a bird native to the tropical regions of America, also present in the Amazon. Just below, the feared onça pintada in Portuguese, or jaguar in English, a typical animal of the Amazon and the Pantanal, the latter being another famous Brazilian ecosystem.

In general, moist tropical forests are highly biodiverse biomes, and the tropical forests of the Americas are consistently more biodiverse than the moist forests of Africa and Asia. With the largest expanse of tropical forest in the Americas, the Amazon rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. One in ten known species of animals and plants in the world lives in the Amazon Rainforest. This constitutes the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world.

The region is home to about 2,500,000 species of insects, tens of thousands of plants, and about 2,000 birds and mammals. To date, at least 40,000 species of plants, 3,000 species of fish, 1,294 species of birds, 427 species of mammals, 428 species of amphibians, and 378 species of reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. One in five of all birds in the world live in the Amazon rainforests. Scientists have described between 96,660 and 128,843 species of invertebrates in Brazil alone.

The diversity of plant species is the highest on Earth, with some experts estimating that one Amazonian square kilometer can contain hundreds of types of plants. To date, about 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been recorded in the region, with many more yet to be discovered or cataloged.

The green leaf area of plants and trees in the forest varies by about 25% as a result of seasonal changes. This area expands during the dry season when sunlight is at its maximum, then undergoes abscission during the cloudy wet season. These changes provide a carbon balance between photosynthesis and respiration.

The forest contains several species that can represent danger. Among the largest predatory creatures are the black caiman, the jaguar, the cougar (or puma), and the anaconda (sucuri). In the Amazon River, electric eels can produce an electric shock that can stun or kill a human, while piranhas are known to bite and injure people. Several species of poison dart frogs secrete lipophilic alkaloid toxins through their skin. There are also numerous parasites and disease vectors. Vampire bats inhabit the forest and can spread the rabies virus. Malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever can also be contracted in the Amazon region.

In its waters, it is also possible to observe one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, the pirarucu. Amazonian fauna and flora were described in the impressive Flora Brasiliensis (15 volumes) by Carl von Martius, an Austrian naturalist who dedicated a good part of his life to researching the Amazon in the 19th century. However, the diversity of species and the difficulty of accessing the high canopies make much of the faunal wealth still unknown.

VEGETATION

The Amazon is one of the three great tropical forests in the world. The Amazonian hyleia, as Alexander von Humboldt defined it, has the appearance, seen from above, of a continuous layer of canopies located approximately 50 meters from the ground.

There are three types of forest in the Amazon, the last two forming the Brazilian Amazon: Andean mountain forests, terra firme forests, and flooded river forests. The terra firme forest, which does not differ much from the Andean forest except for lower density, is located on low plateaus between 30 and 200 meters high and has nutrient-poor soil. This forced an adaptation of plant roots, which, through a symbiotic association with some types of fungi, began to quickly decompose organic matter deposited on the soil in order to absorb nutrients before they are leached.

The flooded river forest also presents some adaptations to environmental conditions, such as respiratory roots, which have pores that allow the absorption of atmospheric oxygen. Areas located in lowlands subject to periodic flooding by white or muddy waters, coming from rivers in regions rich in organic matter, are called várzea forests. And areas flooded by dark waters, which flow through sandy lands poor in minerals and take on a dark color due to the organic matter present, are called igapó forests. The oscillation of the water level can reach up to ten meters in height.

The difficulty for light to enter due to the abundance of canopies means that undergrowth is very scarce in the Amazon, as are the animals that inhabit the soil and need this vegetation. Most Amazonian fauna consists of animals that inhabit the tree canopies, between 30 and 50 meters high.

The diversity of species, however, and the difficulty of access to the high canopies, mean that much of the fauna is still unknown to the scientific community. Amazonian fauna and flora were described in the impressive Flora Brasiliensis, consisting of 15 volumes, by Carl von Martius, an Austrian naturalist who dedicated a good part of his life to researching the Amazon in the 19th century.

The Amazon is not homogeneous; on the contrary, it is formed by a mosaic of very distinct habitats. The diversity of habitats includes transitional forests, dry forests, and semi-deciduous forests; bamboo forests (Guadua spp.), campinaranas, cerrado enclaves, buritizais (palm groves), flooded forests (igapó and várzea), and the terra firme forest.

AMAZON RIVER

Just above, an impressive satellite image of the Amazon River where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The green part is the vegetation cover, basically composed of large trees; the blue and dark blue part that crosses the green part diagonally is the Amazon River; and finally, the blue and black part in the upper right corner of the image is the Atlantic Ocean. Just below, Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas.

The Amazon River is a large South American river that rises in the Andes Mountains, at Lake Lauri or Lauricocha in Peru, and empties into the Atlantic Ocean, near Marajó Island in Brazil. Along its course, it receives the names Tunguragua, Apurímac, Marañón, Ucayali, Amazonas (from the junction of the Marañón and Ucayali rivers in Peru), Solimões, and again Amazonas (from the junction of the Solimões and Negro rivers in Brazil).

For a long time, it was believed that the Amazon River was the most voluminous river in the world and the second in length; however, recent research also points to it as the longest river in the world. It is the river with the largest hydrographic basin in the world, exceeding 7,000,000 km², much of it dense tropical jungle.

It is more than 6,300 kilometers in total length, from its source high in the Andes to its mouth on the east coast of Brazil. In its final stretch of approximately 600 kilometers, the silt it dumps into the Atlantic Ocean takes on a brown appearance with a somewhat reddish tone. The Amazon River drains a total area of 6,000,000 km².

The area covered by water in the Amazon River and its tributaries more than triples during the seasons. On average, in the dry season, 110,000 km² are submerged, while in the rainy season, this area reaches 350,000 km². At its widest point, it reaches 11 km in width in the dry season, which turns into 45 km in the rainy season.

DEFORESTATION

Unfortunately, images of trucks illegally transporting wood in the Amazon region are still common. Illegal deforestation, outside the limits established by Brazilian law—in this case, a maximum of 20% within the Amazon region—is a challenge to be faced by Brazilian environmental and police authorities, difficult to monitor and stop.

Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested areas. The main causes of deforestation in the Amazon are human settlements, land development, and illegal logging. Before the early 1960s, access and subsequent exploration in the interior of the forest was technically and economically unfeasible, and the forest remained virtually intact. At that time, forms of access to properties or public areas were limited, in the vast majority of cases, to aviation or river navigation.

Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 415,000 km² to 587,000 km², with most of the deforested forest being transformed into pasture for cattle. The curious thing is that these landowners or land grabbers (grileiros), depending on the case, insisted on agricultural production in nutrient-poor soil, a contradiction...

About 90% of the deforested lands in the Amazon region since 1970 have been used for cattle pasture. Furthermore, Brazil is currently the world's second-largest producer of soybeans after the United States. What at first would be something good, on the other hand, has a negative effect in Brazil: illegal deforestation. The supposed needs for more areas available for soybean agriculture, among other crops, have been used as an "argument" to "validate" some of the controversial transport projects currently under development in the Amazon.

For example, the first two highways built with relative success in the Amazon region opened up the tropical forest and led to increased deforestation, mainly in areas adjacent to or near the respective highways.

The pace of deforestation has decreased in the Brazilian Amazon since 2004, partly thanks to the action of Brazilian environmental authorities, with the help of more advanced technologies, including the use of satellite imagery to discover suspicious activities and the use of helicopters for faster access to areas being deforested. But some say that the reduction in this pace of deforestation may also be, at least in part, a consequence of two other somewhat obvious facts: the perception of some farmers that land in the Amazon region is not suitable for intensive or extensive cultivation of edible plants and cattle raising, and that the 20% limit for legal deforestation has already been reached in part of the properties.

Farms established during the 1960s were based on cultivation and slash-and-burn methods. However, settlers were unable to manage their fields and crops because of the rapid loss of soil fertility and weed invasion. Amazon soils are naturally productive for only a short period of time—one or two years, at most three. From then on, a large periodic investment in artificial fertilization is necessary.

Furthermore, this characteristic causes some farmers to constantly move to new areas and clear more forest. These irrational agricultural practices led to deforestation and caused extensive environmental damage. Deforestation is considerable, and deforested areas of forest are visible to the naked eye from space.

However, according to reports by the World Bank, a significant portion of the Amazon Rainforest may be lost in the coming years if determined government action is not carried out. By 2075, only 5% of forests may remain in the eastern Amazon. The process is a result of deforestation, climate change, and fires.

In fact, so far, the Brazilian Government and the respective state and municipal governments have not been able to properly stop large burnings and/or forest fires in natural protected areas in the Midwest, Southeast, and North regions of Brazil... Every year, without exception, we see, read, and hear news in the media of large environmental reserves being devastated by fire, mainly in the low humidity months between June and September...

Prevfogo (National Center for the Prevention and Combating of Forest Fires) is a public body that is part of the structure of Ibama (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), which, as the name suggests, is responsible for the policy of preventing and fighting forest fires, with training activities for rural producers and firefighters and educational campaigns for the general population to prevent and fight burnings and/or forest fires.

This public body is also involved in monitoring and research work related to the preservation of natural plant areas protected by law. It is a serious organization, focused on the prevention and fighting of forest fires, but it suffers from a lack of resources for wider and more effective action to achieve its goals and duties, with an insufficient number of personnel and equipment involved in the fights, including aircraft designed for fighting forest fires.

CULTURE (LEGENDS)

There are several legends related to the Amazon. El Dorado, a city whose buildings were all supposedly made of solid gold and whose treasures existed in unimaginable quantities, and Lake Parima (supposedly the Fountain of Youth). These two legends probably refer to the real existence of Lake Amaçu, which had a small island covered with micaceous schist—a material that produces a strong shine when illuminated by sunlight and produced the illusion of riches for Europeans.

IMAGE GALLERY

Just above, the frog Dendrobates leucomelas. Deforestation in the Amazon threatens many species of tree frogs, which are very sensitive to environmental changes. Just below, the small and shy night monkey, which, as the name suggests, has nocturnal habits. It is one of the 118 species of primates present in Brazil, with 92 species in the Amazon and 24 species in the Atlantic Forest, this other important Brazilian biome.

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