Amazon basin Amazon basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. Most of the basin is covered by the Amazon Rainforest, also known as Amazonia. With a area of dense tropical forest, this is the largest rainforest in the world. The Amazon River rises in the Andes Mountains at the west of the basin with its main
Amazon rainforest (TM) to accurately place the different portions of the Amazon into one of the four classifications. In 2005, parts of the Amazon basin experienced the worst drought in one hundred years, and there were indications that 2006 may have been a second successive year of drought. A July 23, 2006 article in the UK newspaper "The Independent" reported the Woods Hole Research Center results, showing that the forest in its present form could survive only three years of drought. Scientists at the Brazilian National Institute of Amazonian Research argued in the article that this drought response, coupled with the effects