PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Land Area

The Amazon is the name given to a vast region located in the northern portion of South America, drained by a vast network of rivers and their tributaries that discharge into the Atlantic at the mouth of the Amazon River. This region (also known as pan-Amazônia) is the planet's largest forest ecosystem and water basin.

The Amazon extends over eight South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela (as well as French Guyana, an overseas department of France) with a total area of approximately 7.5 million square km. Of this total, Brazil owns 63 percent (or 4 million square km). The remaining 37 percent (2.4 million square km) are distributed among Peru (10 percent), Colombia (7 percent), Bolivia (6 percent), Venezuela (6 percent), Guyana (3 percent), Suriname (2 percent), Ecuador (1.5 percent), and French Guyana (1.5 percent). Including 7,408 km of Atlantic coastline, Brazil's borders extend for a total of 23,127 km and its land borders with the other seven Amazon countries extend 11,449 km (seeTable 2.1). The longest of these borders are with Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Ecuador is the only Amazon State with which Brazil does not share a land border.

In Brazil, Article 2 of Law 1806 of January 6, 1953, created the concept of the “Legal Amazon” (Amazônia Legal), an administrative unit encompassing various states (Acre, Amazonas, Amapá, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins, Mato Grosso, part of Maranhão, and some municipalities of Goiás).