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The Amazon Rainforest, also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America. This basin encompasses seven million square kilometers, of which five and a half million square kilometers are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru with 13%, and with minor amounts in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and France (French Guiana). States or departments in four nations bear the name Amazonas after them. Amazonia represents over half of the planet’s remaining rainforests, and it comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world.
The basin is drained by the Amazon River, the world’s largest river in terms of discharge, and the second longest river in the world after the Nile.
Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more animal and plant species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia. As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. One in ten known species in the world lives in the Amazon Rainforest. This constitutes the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world.
The Amazon Rainforest was short-listed in 2008 as a candidate for one of the New7Wonders of Nature by the New Seven Wonders of the World Foundation. As of February 2009 the Amazon ranked first in Group E, the category for forests, national parks and nature reserves.
The Amazon River basin includes parts of eight South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as French Guiana, a department of France.