1. The Amazon is the world’s biggest rain forest, larger than the combination of the two largest rain forest — in the Congo Basin and Indonesia.
2. The Amazon Basin is roughly the size of the 48 contiguous United States and covers some 40% of the South American continent which makes it 6.9 million square kilometers.
3. The Amazon River is by far the world’s largest river by volume, carrying more than 5 times the volume of the Congo or twelve times that of the Mississippi.
4. The Amazon is estimated to have 16,000 tree species and 390 billion individual trees.
5. The Amazon is believed to have 2.5 million species of insects.
More than half the species in the Amazon rain forest are assumed to live in the canopy.
