The Amazon is the world's biggest rainforest, larger than the next two largest rainforests — in the Congo Basin and Indonesia — combined.
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At 6.9 million square kilometers (2.72 million square miles), the Amazon Basin is roughly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States and covers some 40 percent of the South American continent.
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The Amazon River is by far the world's largest river by volume, carrying more than five times the volume of the Congo or twelve times that of the Mississippi.
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The Amazon is estimated to have 16,000 tree species and 390 billion individual tree
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Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is found in Brazil.
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The Amazon is thought to have 2.5 million species of insects.
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More than half the species in the Amazon rainforest are thought to live in the canopy.
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70 percent of South America's GDP is produced in areas that receive rainfall or water from the Amazon.
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The Amazon influences rainfall patterns as far away as the United States.
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Cattle ranching accounts for roughly 70 percent of deforestation in the Amazon.