The Amazon River is the longest river in South America, flowing from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean.
The river rises through a network of headwaters in the Andes of Peru and travels eastward across the continent before reaching the Atlantic in Brazil. Measurements of river length can vary because geographers differ over which headstream and mouth to use, but the Amazon is unquestionably the world’s largest river by discharge and drainage-basin area.
Its basin covers roughly 7 million square kilometres and includes the largest tropical rainforest on Earth. Thousands of tributaries feed the main river, including the Rio Negro and the Madeira. Near Manaus, the dark Rio Negro meets the pale, sediment-rich Solimões in the famous Meeting of Waters.
The Amazon supports extraordinary biodiversity and many Indigenous communities. Ocean-going tides can travel far upriver, producing the powerful tidal bore called the pororoca in some areas. The river’s enormous flow carries more freshwater to the ocean than any other river.