Amazon River Full of Superlatives: Its Rain Forest Would Blanket U.S.

* The Amazon is second only to Egypt’s Nile in length. Annually, the river discharges an estimated 20% to 25% of all water that runs off the Earth’s land surfaces.

* Seventeen of the Amazon’s 1,000 or so named tributaries are more than 900 miles long, and the system includes about 50,000 miles of navigable waterways.

* Annual floods raise Amazon River water levels between 20 and 50 feet and inundate the forest as far as 20 miles on either side of the main river channel.

* Scientists estimate that between 2,500 and 3,000 species of fish inhabit the Amazon. There are more than 250 species of catfish alone.

* The Amazon Basin rain forest would more than cover all the territory of the continental United States. It is bound by the Guyana highlands to the north, the Andes to the west, the Brazilian central plateau to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.

* Trees in the Amazon rain forest may grow as tall as 200 feet. Scientists have counted as many as 283 tree species in this forest.

* An estimated 25,000 different species of plants potentially useful to people grow in the Amazon Basin. Only a few of these have been widely exploited, but their products are extremely important: rubber, chocolate, manioc (used in making breads and tapioca), Brazil nuts, curare (a muscle relaxant) and quinine (used to treat malaria).