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Amazon basin
Major drainage basin in South America / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the drainage basin. For the geologic feature, see Amazon Basin (sedimentary basin).
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about 7,000,000 km2 (2,700,000 sq mi),[1] or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela, as well as the territory of French Guiana.[2][3]
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Most of the basin is covered by the Amazon rainforest, also known as Amazonia. With a 5.5 million km2 (2.1 million sq mi) area of dense tropical forest, it is the largest rainforest in the world.