Amazing Jungle - Amazon Jungle, World's Most Unique and Mysterious Forest

The Amazon rainforest, also known as Amazonia, or the Amazon jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America. This basin encompasses seven million square kilometers (1.7 billion acres), of which five and a half million square kilometers (1.4 billion acres) are covered by the rainforest.

The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests, and it comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world. The Amazon rainforest was short-listed in 2008 as a candidate to one of the New7Wonders of Nature by the New Seven Wonders of the World Foundation.

Amazon River

The Amazon Basin is the planets largest reservoir of fresh water. One fifth of all running water on the planet flows through the Amazon



The Amazon River is 6,868 km (4000 miles) long, the same distance as North Cape (Honningsvåg - Norway) to Las Palmas (Canary Islands - Spain), a trip that will take you 4 days and 5 hours if you are traveling by car and don't stop to eat and sleep (Ship from Cadiz to Las Palmas).

Special Things about Amazon Jungle

One hectare in the Amazon rainforest has been calculated to have a value of $6.820 (USD) if intact forest is sustainable harvested for fruits, latex, and timber; $1.000 (USD) if clear-cut for commercial timber (not sustainable harvested); or $148 (USD) if used as cattle pasture. In money, the Amazon rainforest should be worth USD 4.092.000.000.000 if sustainable harvested or only 2% of that number if used as cattle pasture.

For the global climate (and you) the Amazonian rainforest has a much bigger value. The Amazonian rainforest is estimated to accumulate 0.62 ±0.37 tonnes of carbon per hectare, per annum. Approximately, 300 million tons, but the logging and deforestation of the Amazon produces 200 million tons of CO2 every year, so a sustainable harvesting of the resources in the Amazon would really make a big difference for the global climate.