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- Based mostly on one of the best scientific knowledge accessible, the unprecedented Amazon Water Impression Index attracts collectively monitoring and analysis knowledge to establish probably the most susceptible areas of the Brazilian Amazon.
- In accordance with the index, 20% of the 11,216 Brazilian Amazon micro basins have an effect thought of excessive, very excessive or excessive; half of those watersheds are affected by hydroelectric crops.
- The identical index factors out that 323 of the 385 Indigenous Lands within the Brazilian Amazon face a medium to low impression, which demonstrates the basic position of those areas in defending the aquatic ecosystems of the Amazon.
- The Amazon River Basin covers 7 million sq. kilometers (2.7 million sq. miles) and accommodates 20% of all freshwater on the Earth’s floor; nonetheless, little is thought concerning the impacts of elevated human exercise on aquatic ecosystems.
Over the previous 30 years, the Amazon has misplaced 12% of its floor water — a complete of 11,046 sq. kilometers (4,265 sq. miles), an space 14 occasions the dimensions of New York Metropolis. That’s in keeping with a research launched in September 2021 by the MapBiomas collaborative community. In accordance with the undertaking, “Land use dynamics based mostly on the conversion of forest for cattle farming and agriculture along with dam development end in decreased water circulation.”
The Amazon Water Impression Index (AWII), developed by Ambiental Media with funding from the Instituto Serrapilheira, factors in the identical path: 20% of the aquatic ecosystems within the Brazilian Amazon have been considerably impacted.
These numbers make clear the true scope of the harm already executed to the Amazon’s aquatic ecosystems, and point out that Brazil’s ongoing freshwater disaster is extra critical than it appears. “Environmental water conservation coverage is in want of pressing revision,” says biologist Cecília Gontijo Leal, a scientific marketing consultant who labored on the Aquazônia undertaking, one other initiative specializing in the problem.
Constructed to contribute to the dialogue, the AWII isn’t aimed toward being a exact educational software, however somewhat a scientific journalism software based mostly on the accessible knowledge. Its objective is to supply clear visible details about the areas and basins which might be most affected, along with certified opinions. This makes the index a reference platform for understanding the impacts of human exercise on the aquatic ecosystems of the Amazon River Basin, which covers 7 million km2 (2.7 million mi2) over eight nations and holds roughly 18% of all of the freshwater that reaches Earth’s oceans.
Past its colossal proportions, water within the Amazon is what connects the whole lot. Spilling down from glaciers within the Andes, it kinds the rivers that alongside their approach feed human communities and irrigate forests and plains wealthy in fauna and flora. The evapotranspiration from the vegetation produces new water in an annual cycle of rainfall that feeds again the inventory within the biome after which travels throughout Brazil. These so-called “flying rivers” irrigate crops and assure water provide for city facilities additional south.
Local weather, economic system, science, tradition, ecology, vitality, politics and biodiversity: all are a part of the water forest.
Assessing threats to the basin
For many years, the worldwide debate on conservation of the Amazon biome has centered on the threats to its vegetation: fires, deforestation, mining, cattle ranching, soybean farming. The Amazon is seen as a supply of uncooked supplies. Aquatic ecosystems additionally endure from human exercise — lack of forest impacts the hydrological cycle — however the harm is tougher to establish and perceive.
City waste isn’t the one type of air pollution affecting our bodies of water. “After we discuss fireplace or forest degradation, it’s not simply concerning the air or the soil: it additionally means there might be issues within the aquatic surroundings,” says Leal, a biologist on the College of São Paulo’s (USP) Luiz de Queiroz School of Agriculture. “When measuring an enterprise’s impression on a river, we frequently solely take a look at the issues related to riverbank vegetation.
“Regardless that a lot of the impacts measured within the index occur on land, our focus has turned to the placement, depth and quantity of strain these impacts exert on the our bodies of water in every micro basin,” Leal provides.
In creating the index, a specific amount of flexibility was essential to assess environmental impacts, both as a result of lack of information or to the truth that every micro basin is a person ecological advanced with its personal environmental or authorized peculiarities. For instance, the impacts brought on by a hydroelectric dam or deforestation are pretty clear, however the identical can’t be mentioned of the networks of 1000’s of small clandestine roads chopping by the online of waterways working all through the forest.
“Within the Amazon, impacts change relying on the traits of every ecosystem,” Leal says. “Deforestation has harsher results on the floodplains and igapó [flooded blackwater] forests. However, damming up an igarapé [small forest stream] adjustments an surroundings’s dynamics: the circulation of natural matter and the distribution of species inside it.”
Equally difficult was gauging the goal, vary, and depth of every issue placing strain on the surroundings. Are the impacts worse for native human populations or for natural world? That is exhausting to find out, as results are totally different for every species. Migratory fish, for instance, endure the consequences of hydroelectric dams, however different species don’t.
And whereas it’s not but potential to pinpoint the place the heaviest impacts are being felt, it’s clear they’re better the place a number of of them overlap.
“Probably the most degraded areas are these the place the pressures add up,” says Laura Kurtzberg, a professor at Florida Worldwide College and an skilled in knowledge visualization. “After we zoom in on watersheds, we will see that the impression on water is as sturdy as it’s on land. It’s a silent drama.”
Then, the even much less tangible impression of local weather change is factored in into the AWII. The index’s last end result affords a concrete overview of present threats to the Amazon Basin, however with clear limitations within the modeling.
Information gaps in a watery world
“The farther we transfer into the waters of Amazonia, the much less information we now have,” says Angélica Resende from USP’s Tropical Forestry Lab.
This isn’t solely due to the dearth of present analysis, but additionally the challenges concerned with monitoring the surroundings.
The one strategy to perform large-scale monitoring within the Amazon is by distant sensing (satellite tv for pc imagery), however “the challenges of working with water are totally different from these of working with the rainforest and deforestation. It’s extra advanced,” says Cláudio Barbosa from INPE, Brazil’s nationwide area company, and coordinator of the company’s Aquatic Techniques Instrumentation Lab (LabISA).
The worldwide neighborhood has expressed concern concerning the lack of standing forest within the Amazon since INPE started measuring deforestation through satellite tv for pc in 1988. In accordance with Barbosa, Brazil’s first sensors allowed just for evaluation of the margins and floor cowl in instances of deforestation and mining.
Applied sciences making it simpler to measure our bodies of water started to appear in 2016. However not sufficient time has handed to succeed in many conclusions from the info, Barbosa says. Within the meantime, INPE is already working with algorithms that enable for estimating sediment variation in water. “This technique, which we name CADE, measures the composition of sunshine within the water column,” Barbosa says. “That gentle is the vitality that feeds phytoplankton and permits for variety of fish species.
“To investigate water high quality, we now have to work with the focus of sediment, chlorophyll and dissolved natural matter,” he provides. “We are able to already map these three parameters by satellite tv for pc.”
The absence of extra consolidated knowledge on water creates challenges for consciousness, scientific focus, public coverage and conservation initiatives. Edgardo Latrubesse is a fluvial geomorphology specialist — somebody who research how rivers kind and alter over time — at Goiás Federal College. He says public insurance policies on water administration exist already. “We’ve a robust Water Sources Regulation and basin regulating committees. The issue in Brazil is that, regardless of having the laws, nobody respects it.”
However Cecília Leal says the prevailing laws views aquatic ecosystems merely as sources — that’s, completely for human use. In consequence, broader ecological elements like biodiversity are unnoticed. On the Nationwide Water Company, rivers are measured and seen in keeping with their utilitarian potential for purging air pollution. “It is a crucial service, however we will’t consider water our bodies solely by way of their capacity to dilute waste,” Leal says.
With out knowledge on the present state of affairs of the Amazon’s water sources, it’s unimaginable to plan the way forward for ecosystems which might be always remodeling, says Leandro Castello from Virginia Tech within the U.S. And consequently, we missing long-term references. “What’s ‘a whole lot of fish’ for us at this time is nothing in comparison with what was ‘a whole lot of fish’ for our grandparents,” Castello says.
“Rivers at this time are fully totally different than they have been 40 years in the past — however we don’t have knowledge on how they’re totally different.”
There’s a longtime technique for researching standing forest on dry land. When describing land organisms, biologists can establish species by following sound trails — of birds and amphibians, amongst others — and observing traces left behind. As for fish in rivers, “you need to accumulate them, as a result of the water is normally cloudy or black. Information on direct remark is uncommon,” says Jansen Zuanon, from the Nationwide Institute of Amazonian Analysis (INPA).
Moreover, land organisms are extra homogeneously distributed, unfold out over a roughly two-dimensional floor, Zuanon says. Fish, then again, stay in waterways that department out as they circulation by the basin. As they journey towards headwaters, niches of more and more smaller habitats are fashioned in creeks and streams, and the fauna begin to change longitudinally.
Since 2015, Zuanon has participated within the Amazon Fish undertaking, a broad database on water species within the Amazon. The undertaking has logged almost 2,700 species thus far, distributed by elements reminiscent of local weather, topography, hydrography and rainfall. One piece of information already established is that there are extra endemic species current within the western a part of the Amazon Basin, within the Peruvian Andes. “Biodiversity tends to fall off as you progress towards the mouth of the river,” Zuanon says. “It’s shocking as a result of the river widens close to the mouth within the decrease basin, and we might anticipate an accumulation of species.”
One speculation for this factors to the traditional previous: Between 8 million and 10 million years in the past, the Amazon River flowed into the Pacific Ocean. When the Andes started to rise, the river modified path and commenced flowing into the Caribbean. “Because the Andes have been established, that area rose extra and the river started to empty into the Atlantic,” Zuanon says. “Apparently, the method didn’t enable sufficient time for all of the environments within the decrease a part of the river to be colonized.”
Zuanon additionally research the gradual and refined results of local weather change on aquatic environments. A research by INPA within the Central Amazon analyzed fish from a reserve close to Manaus, the biggest metropolis within the Brazilian Amazon, the place rainfall has elevated in recent times. There, researchers detected adjustments within the stream species inside a ten,000-hectare (25,000-acre) protected space. Rainfall improve has affected the buildup of banks of useless leaves and the quantity of sand in environments not affected by deforestation or air pollution. “Altering the construction of the substrate means altering the composition of the fish fauna,” Zuanon says. “It’s not a neighborhood extinction, however we now have already seen adjustments inside even protected techniques.
“Excessive occasions like droughts and floods impression fish manufacturing and the flexibility to foretell methods to get round on waterways,” he provides. “It’s not nearly biodiversity, but additionally about individuals’s lives.”
“Fish regenerate forests by dispersing seeds,” says Rogério Fonseca, coordinator of the Fauna and Forest Interactions Laboratory at Amazonas Federal College. “Water connects the whole lot: it’s the bloodstream of the system, spreading vitamins and permitting crops and animals to propagate from one area to a different.”
Fewer fish for the desk
The roughly 30 million Brazilians residing within the nation’s Amazonian area have among the many highest charges of fish consumption on the planet. The United Nations’ Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO) estimates common world consumption to be 20.3 kilograms (44.8 kilos) per individual per 12 months; in some communities in Brazil’s Amazonas state, it may be as excessive as 150 kg (330 lbs).
Though the Amazon’s fish inhabitants is nice — and solely about 50% of the system’s sustainable potential is exploited, in keeping with Leandro Castello — impacts from air pollution and overfishing threaten fishing stability. Native populations endure from a scarcity of fish at sure occasions of the 12 months, and it’s estimated that at this time, greater than half the riverbank communities alongside the Amazon and its fundamental tributaries, just like the Madeira and the Purus, use neighborhood administration to make sure they’ve sufficient to eat.
Such administration isn’t solely beneficial for meals and financial safety, but additionally for conserving sources. “These are humble communities of fifty individuals, usually positioned 300 kilometers [190 miles] from the closest city,” Castello says. “However they may at all times be the pillars of any conservation motion.”
One of the crucial profitable examples comes from the Mamirauá Sustainable Growth Reserve, within the Mid-Solimões River Basin in Amazonas state, which facilities on a species that has change into an emblem of the forest: the pirarucu, or Arapaima gigas.
The mannequin is easy: fishermen rely what number of of those big fish are current within the lake and set a fishing quota. The quantity will increase when fishermen adjust to established dimension limits. A predictable provide of fish means the market is organized and the locals can revenue extra. In accordance with Castello, some 450 communities have already adopted the mannequin.
Is water a low-impact vitality supply?
A report revealed by WWF in September 2021 named the Tapajós, a tributary of the Amazon, one of many 10 most threatened rivers on the planet. This, due to a collection of initiatives to dam its waters — an out of date vitality technique, in keeping with WWF, given the resistance of successive governments to put money into lower-impact, renewable alternate options.
The Tapajós and the Xingu, one other Amazon tributary, are cratonic rivers, which suggests they’ve a really mild gradient and thus have little lateral mobility and carry little sediment. Communities alongside any such river are extremely depending on the flood pulse.
“The Tapajós undertaking is absurd,” says Edgardo Latrubesse. “It’s a system of enormous waterfalls and a continuum of hydroelectric crops which regulate the river and create a 1,000-kilometer-long [620-mi] synthetic lake. All this in an space of nice variety and scenic magnificence.
“The pure heritage of the Brazilian river system is being uncared for,” he provides. “The Tapajós is an emblem, and it should be saved.”
Successive Brazilian governments have clung to the concept the nation’s rivers would supply the proper vitality matrix as a result of water is a renewable useful resource with low carbon emission. “This discourse was aligned with the worldwide neighborhood, however they simplified the complexity of the issue,” Latrubesse says. “A river that has a thousand species of fish is a singular treasure. Carbon within the ambiance and the dialogue of local weather change are irrelevant matters by way of constructing a hydroelectric plant on a river like this as a result of the impression is speedy.”
However hydropower already accounts for 62.7% of the electrical energy feeding into Brazil’s grid, and it continues to be endorsed by most public managers as a geographical asset for brand spanking new improvement initiatives. Renewable sources like photo voltaic, wind and biomass presently comprise solely 22.7% of the entire vitality combine.
“Planning dams in collection with out contemplating the cumulative results is a recipe for catastrophe,” says Cecília Leal. “A plan that makes it potential to prioritize sure locations for era and others for conservation, with free rivers, could be an alternate.”
The Ministry of Mines and Power’s Nationwide Power Plan (PNE 2050) requires elevated energy era from hydroelectric crops to be a precedence. The objective is to extend put in capability from 98 gigawatts at current to 168 GW by the tip of 2030, with a lot of this energy coming from the river basins of northern Brazil.
However it is a situation that has performed out many occasions earlier than, usually to a tragic finish. The Balbina dam, constructed within the Eighties on the Uatumã River, one other Amazon tributary, is one in all many examples. The creation of its reservoir flooded such a big space of forest that at this time it emits extra greenhouse fuel per unit of electrical energy produced than a coal-fired energy plant. It additionally compelled the displacement of an Indigenous group from their native lands.
In a research revealed in 2021, researcher Thiago B.A. Couto, along with the Nationwide Geographic Society and Florida Worldwide College’s Environmental Institute, confirmed that small hydroelectric dams within the Amazon trigger the lack of river connectivity and stop migratory fish from finishing their life cycles.
“Indigenous teams and riverbank communities rely on with the ability to fish migratory species for his or her livelihood,” Couto wrote. “9 small hydroelectric dams on the Juruena River, a tributary of the Tapajós in Mato Grosso, already have an effect on a number of peoples, such because the Enawenê-Nawê.”
This can be a key discovering, provided that small crops make up 80% of the 275 hydroelectric crops put in within the Amazon. Their licensing is much less regulated and so they are likely to keep away from the sort of public scrutiny that bigger undertakings face.
The Belo Monte dam, on the Xingu River, has over the previous decade change into emblematic of the problem. It’s positioned close to the municipality of Vitória do Xingu in Pará state, and just some years after going into operation, the dam has change into extra well-known for its environmental and social liabilities than for the vitality it generates. It makes use of what’s presupposed to be a extra river-friendly mannequin, the run-of-the-river system, during which the generators lie horizontally on the backside of the river, the reservoir space is decreased, and the quantity of water that enters the plant is actually the identical as the quantity that leaves. From an environmental perspective, it ought to have much less of an impression.
“The issue with this mannequin is that it doesn’t defend water sufficient. It stays very susceptible to heavy droughts, which occurred in 2021,” Jansen Zuanon says. “So there might be extra strain for brand spanking new reservoir initiatives or reservoirs in collection, like we now have on the Tapajós.”
To make issues worse, local weather fashions level to adjustments in rainfall patterns, with much less rain within the jap a part of the Amazon — exactly the place Belo Monte is positioned. Zuanon says that so as to keep minimal turbine operate, extra water must be diverted from Volta Grande, the extremely scenic area flooded by the dam.
A survey carried out by the Instituto Socioambiental along with the Juruna Indigenous individuals evaluated the latest hydrological cycle of the Xingu and located, amongst different points, a drop in fruit manufacturing within the native igapós, the flooded forests. This resulted in much less meals for turtles and tambaqui fish (Colossoma macropomum), that means much less meals for the individuals residing there.
“For the Indigenous individuals, the query is fundamental: if there is no such thing as a extra meals for the fish, there might be no extra fish to eat,” says biologist Camila Cherem Ribas from INPA’s Board of Biodiversity and Scientific Organic Collections Program.
The Madeira River is one other big waterway dealing with the specter of hydroelectric dams. The large Jirau and Santo Antônio dams have been working close to Porto Velho, capital of the state of Rondônia, over the previous decade, and two new hydroelectric crops are included within the 2050 Nationwide Power Plan as a part of binational agreements between Brazil and Bolivia.
In accordance with the Dam Environmental Vulnerability Index (DEVI), developed by geologist Latrubesse and different scientists, the Madeira is probably the most susceptible river within the Amazon. And a research by Latrubesse revealed in Nature in 2020 identifies 16 hydroelectric initiatives threaten the higher stretches of the Madeira.
Gold: A dream was environmental nightmare
The Madeira area round Porto Velho was as soon as one of many world’s best areas for alluvial gold mining. However development of the dams left the mining areas flooded and made licensing of mining initiatives unimaginable.
This implies there are nonetheless a whole bunch of dredgers within the metropolis or upriver that proceed to scour the riverbed with out mining authorization or environmental licensing. On this unlawful mining mannequin, dredgers suck materials from the riverbed to filter out and separate the gold utilizing mercury. The contaminated water is then dumped again into the river.
This “Floating Gold Rush” intensified with the 2020 financial disaster precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, amid shrinking fish shares and a scarcity of environmental enforcement. Within the Humaitá area, many fishermen give up their commerce to take up gold mining, which is each extra worthwhile and extra polluting.
The mercury used to separate out the gold finally ends up contaminating the water and destroying the meals chain. “Mercury tends to build up within the our bodies of organisms and develop exponentially within the chain,” Zuanon says. “Predators accumulate extra. Then issues unfold all through the basin, leading to misplaced variety and ecological features in each local people.”
Latrubesse is amongst those that defend the presence of a regulated exercise topic to sure limits, legal guidelines, protocols and quotas. He says the issue is just not the mining itself, however the methods that unlawful miners use to extract the gold and the truth that they do it inside conservation areas and Indigenous lands.
“The system could possibly be modified to reduce the impression. Methods for extracting gold with out utilizing mercury exist,” says Valdenira Santos, a professor at Amapá Federal College (UNIFAP) and researcher on the state’s Institute for Scientific and Technological Analysis (IEPA).
It’s a fancy and delicate debate: historical past has proven that what occurs in the true world of mining by no means corresponds with good theories. In February of this 12 months, the federal authorities launched a program to formalize and bolster artisanal mining within the Amazon — an initiative that drew a right away outcry from scientists and environmentalists.
“Though mining could be executed with out utilizing mercury, it’s nonetheless fully distant from the fact within the Amazon,” Cecília Leal says. “And not using a main change in mining tradition, the exercise will are likely to proceed producing vital environmental and social impacts.”
Flooded forests: Legendary landscapes of the Amazon
The dams of the massive hydropower crops pose an particularly critical risk to the Madeira due to an important component for the well being of the biome: sediments. Nearly 90% of the sediment within the Amazon system comes from the Andean tributaries. “Crucial sedimentary portion of your complete Amazon Basin is positioned within the Ucayali, Marañon and Madeira rivers,” Latrubesse says.
Particulate matter from totally different mineral origins, like erosion or decomposing organisms, sediments work as pure fertilizer in a watershed and serve very important features reminiscent of transporting vitamins and controlling lateral migration charges. Within the Amazon, they’re liable for the fertility of the floodplains, distinctive ecosystems that cowl about 14% of the basin.
The floodplains and flooded forests, referred to as várzeas and igapós, respectively, are distinctive to this immense tropical surroundings and have been defending its life and habitats for millennia. They rely on the native flood pulse, which is set by rainfall on the headwaters of the basin’s fundamental rivers. This determines the degrees of annual floods and droughts.
“These have at all times been the environments most occupied by human populations within the Amazon due to the nutrient-rich soil, even in pre-Columbian durations,” says Jochen Schongart, an affiliate researcher on INPA’s Board for Environmental Dynamics Analysis (CODAM). These fertile inland areas are the place a lot of the rural communities lie.
Flood areas are notably susceptible to deforestation or overfishing, in addition to local weather change and El Niño and La Niña phenomena, which intensify the degrees of rainfall and drought. MapBiomas knowledge launched in September 2021 level to an elevated drought development in floodplain areas.
“After we don’t have the forest that mitigates them, droughts and floods change into extra intense,” says Raimunda Lucineide Gonçalves Pinheiro, a professor at Western Pará Federal College’s Institute of Training Sciences. “If the stream silts up, it overflows much more.
“The floodplain is plentiful,” he provides. “It has many fish and is fertile for rising meals: bananas, watermelon, melons, greens. In the course of the flood season, the lakes the place fish are caught combine with the river, which floods over into the forest. Fish go into the forest to spawn and feed on the fruits that fall from the timber.”
The quantity of sediment deposited on the mouth of the Amazon is estimated at 1.2 billion metric tons per 12 months. A part of the fabric launched by the river feeds the coast as much as Venezuela, forming the biggest belt of mud bars on the planet. A part of that is retained on the platform in Amapá.
“If the quantity of sediment decreases, there’s a deficit of fabric on the platform and alongside the coast of neighboring nations,” says Valdenira Santos. Much less sediment, mixed with sturdy hydrodynamics within the ocean, will speed up erosion processes close to the mouth of the biggest river on the planet.
Biodiversity tries to adapt to those adjustments in morphology, drainage community and hydrology. “However invasive species, such because the Malaysian shrimp, that are introduced in with ballast water on cargo ships, are already being seen on the mouth of the river. This could have an effect on the redistribution of species,” Santos says.
Consultants’ fundamental concern is with the retention of sediments by giant dams, particularly within the Madeira Basin. “If your complete circulation of sediments from the Andes have been blocked,” Latrubesse says, “the Amazon system may die fully.”
The long run: A coordinated effort by the basin
Within the intricate plot of evolution within the tropics, “South America has probably the most numerous solid of species,” researcher Michael Goulding wrote in his ebook The Fishes and the Forest: Explorations in Amazonian Pure Historical past. “The Amazon Basin offered perfect circumstances for the irradiation of life in an virtually unbelievable variety of niches.”
A complete evaluation of degradation on a continental scale is a problem for scientists. There’s no coordinated knowledge community for your complete Amazon hydrological system, a lot much less an establishment or authorities company working to preserve your complete basin. And knowledge surveys or eventual conservation plans want to incorporate extra than simply the Brazilian Amazon. Any exercise in anoy of the opposite nations that additionally make up the basin — Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana, Peru and Suriname — will have an effect on Brazil, because the water flows by to the Amazon.
Throughout the basin, areas protected by nationwide laws stay one software of conservation. One other is environmental licensing laws. Leandro Castello says these are necessary, however they’re not designed to guard aquatic ecosystems. “It’s a giant puzzle,” he says.
The dearth of a channel for dialogue between scientists and policymakers makes the situation much more advanced. In Valdenira Santos’s view, the answer lies in becoming a member of three complementary forces: inspection and monitoring; watershed and land use by firms and the inhabitants; and analysis. “With out becoming a member of these efforts and pursuits, there might be no change,” he says.
“We’d like options, as a result of we clearly have issues,” Leal says, including that specializing in areas whose pure traits are nonetheless intact is essential. “It’s a lot simpler to protect than to revive. Impacts are tough to reverse.”
Latest research, Leal says, present that the conservation of freshwater environments helps keep biodiversity, together with species on land. “It’s time that we take a look at aquatic ecosystems not simply as water sources, however in a extra beneficiant and integral approach.”
This story was first revealed in Portuguese on Ambiental Media on Might 4th, 2022.
Banner picture: In one of many best-preserved areas of the Amazon, rivers and forests combine within the area of the Japurá River, which begins in Colombia and crosses the Brazilian state of Amazonas till it flows into the Solimões River. Picture by André Dib.
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