Amazon Basin in the context of Pomacanthidae

Charles Marie de La Condamine (French: [la kɔ̃damin]; 28 January 1701 – 4 February 1774) was a French explorer, geographer, and mathematician. He spent ten years in territory which is now Ecuador, measuring the length of a degree of latitude at the equator and preparing the first map of the Amazon region based on astro-geodetic observations. Furthermore he was a contributor to the Encyclopédie.

The geography of Bolivia includes the Eastern Andes Mountain Range (also called the Cordillera Oriental) which bisects Bolivia roughly from north to south. To the east of that mountain chain are lowland plains of the Amazon Basin, and to the west is the Altiplano which is a highland plateau where Lake Titicaca is located. Bolivia's geography has features similar to those of Peru which abuts Bolivia's northwest border; like Bolivia, Peru is bisected from north to south by the Eastern Andes Mountains, and these two countries share Lake Titicaca which is the highest navigable lake on Earth. Unlike Peru, however, Bolivia is one of the two landlocked countries in South America, the other being Paraguay, which is located along Bolivia's southeast border.

Cobija is a city in Bolivia, capital of the department of Pando, and is located about 600 km (373 mi.) north of La Paz in the Amazon Basin on the border with Brazil. Cobija lies on the banks of the Rio Acre across from the Brazilian city of Brasiléia. Cobija lies at an elevation of ca. 280 m (920 ft.) above sea level and has a tropical and rainy climate.

Cobija has approximately 80,000 inhabitants, is the seat of a university and capital of the Bolivian Pando Department. Cobija has two airports and is connected by one road to El Choro in the Beni Department, which is not always passable during the rainy season. When the rain allows it, Cobija is connected to the rest of Bolivia also via road. Cobija is connected to Brazil by two bridges.

The Cordillera Occidental or Western Cordillera of Bolivia is part of the Andes (that is also part of the American Cordillera), a mountain range characterized by volcanic activity, making up the natural border with Chile and starting in the north with Juqhuri and ending in the south at the Licancabur volcano, which is on the southern limit of Bolivia with Chile. The border goes through the innominated point located at two-thirds of elevation of Licancabur's northeastern slope at the southwesternmost point of Bolivia at 22° 49' 41" south and 67° 52' 35" west. The climate of the region is cold and inadequate for animal and plant life. Its main feature is its ground, in which are large quantities of metallic minerals including gold, silver, copper, and others. The range consists of three sections:

• The northern section, in which you can find the highest peaks in Bolivia, tallest of which is the volcano Sajama at 6,542 meters. Sajama is perennially covered in snow. It contains the volcanoes Pomerape and Parinacota (called Payachata collectively), the latter being a dormant volcano with a cone of snow similar to Mount Fuji in Japan.
• The central section, situated between Uyuni and Coipasa. Its most prominent summit is the Ollagüe (Ullawi) volcano on the border with Chile.
• The southern section, characterized by volcanic activity and by having sandstorms and fog, taking into account Licancabur, which is 5,920 meters high (but only two-thirds of the northeastern slope of the volcano belong to Bolivia up to 5415 meters). The lakes Laguna Colorada and Laguna Verde can be found on Licancabur, so named because of their respective colors.

The Choqueyapu River, sometimes called the La Paz River, is a river in the La Paz Department of Bolivia. It belongs to the drainage basin of the Amazon. The river originates in a spring called Achachi Qala (Aymara: achachi border stone, old, grandfather, qala stone) in the Cordillera Real near the mountain Chacaltaya at a height of 5,395 m. It crosses the city La Paz from north to south. South of Illimani and north of the Kimsa Cruz mountain range it turns to the east; at this point it is better known as the La Paz River. The confluence with Cotacajes River is the beginning of the Beni River, also known as Alto Beni ("high Beni") in this region. The river is known to be contaminated with sewage, with enteropathogenic bacteria which is believed to contribute to the high incidence of diarrheal disease in the city of La Paz.

Tributaries include the Amutara River.

The Carhuasanta is a small river located in the Arequipa Region of Peru. It is known as the headwaters of the Amazon River. The brook is fed by the winter snows of Nevado Mismi, (5,597 m), some 6,400 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean. Of all the possible river sources in the Amazon Basin, it is the snow melt of the Carhuasanta that has been calculated by cartographers to be one of the furthermost water sources from the mouth of the Amazon.

The Carhuasanta joins with the Quebrada Apacheta, becoming the Rio Lloqueta. The river has several more name changes before it becomes the Apurímac River. The mining town of Caylloma lies near the junction of four rivers that form the Apurímac river.

Nauta is a town in the northeastern part of Loreto Province in the Peruvian Amazon, roughly 62 miles (100 km) south of Iquitos, the provincial capital. Nauta is located on the north bank of the Marañón River, a major tributary of the Upper Amazon, a few miles from the confluence of the Río Ucayali.

Established by Manuel Pacaya–Samiria, a leader of the Kokama people, following the 1830 uprising at the Jesuit mission of Lagunas, Nauta soon became the primary commercial hub of the Peruvian selva baja (known also as Omagua, or the Amazonian lowlands). In 1853, a Brazilian-owned paddle steamer made it all the way to Nauta.

The Pongo de Manseriche is a gorge in northwest Peru. The Marañón River runs through this gorge (and water gap) before it reaches the Amazon Basin.

The Pongo ('gate' in Quechua) de Manseriche is 3 miles (4.8 km) long, located at 4° 27′ 30″ south latitude and 77° 34′ 51″ west longitude, just below the mouth of the Río Santiago, and between it and the old missionary station of Borja.

A blackwater river is a type of river with a slow-moving channel flowing through forested swamps or wetlands. Most major blackwater rivers are in the Amazon Basin and the Southern United States. The term is used in fluvial studies, geology, geography, ecology, and biology. Not all dark rivers are blackwater in that technical sense. Some rivers in temperate regions, which drain or flow through areas of dark black loam, are simply black due to the color of the soil; these rivers are black mud rivers. There are also black mud estuaries.

Blackwater rivers are lower in nutrients than whitewater rivers and have ionic concentrations higher than rainwater. The unique conditions lead to flora and fauna that differ from both whitewater and clearwater rivers. The classification of Amazonian rivers into black, clear, and whitewater was first proposed by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1853 based on water colour, but the types were more clearly defined by chemistry and physics by Harald Sioli [de] from the 1950s to the 1980s. Although many Amazonian rivers fall clearly into one of these categories, others show a mix of characteristics and may vary depending on season and flood levels.

The Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis), commonly referred to as cowfish in Brazil, is a species of manatee that lives in the Amazon Basin in Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. It has thin, wrinkled brownish or gray colored skin, with fine hairs scattered over its body and a white chest patch. It is the smallest of the three extant species of manatee.

In biogeography, geodispersal is the erosion of barriers to gene flow and biological dispersal (Lieberman, 2005.; Albert and Crampton, 2010.). Geodispersal differs from vicariance, which reduces gene flow through the creation of geographic barriers. In geodispersal, the geographical ranges of individual taxa, or of whole biotas, are merged by erosion of a physical barrier to gene flow or dispersal. Multiple related geodispersal and vicariance events can be mutually responsible for differences among populations. As these geographic barriers break down, organisms of the secluded ecosystems can interact, allowing gene flow between previously separated species, creating more biological variation within a region.

A well documented example of geodispersal in between continental ecosystems was the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI) between the terrestrial faunas and floras of North America and South America, that followed the formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago. Between 69 and 47 million years ago, the Thulean Land Bridge facilitated gene flow by allowing bees from the Old World to travel to the New World, an example of geodispersal from the Old World to the New World. Another example was the formation of the modern Amazon River Basin about 10 million years ago, which involved the merging of previously isolated Neotropical fish faunas to form what is now the most species-rich continental aquatic ecosystem on Earth (Oberdorff et al., 2011).

The smooth-fronted caiman (Paleosuchus trigonatus), also known as Schneider's dwarf caiman or Schneider's smooth-fronted caiman, is a crocodilian from South America, where it is native to the Amazon and Orinoco Basins. It is the second-smallest species of the family Alligatoridae, the smallest being Cuvier's dwarf caiman, also from tropical South America and in the same genus. An adult typically grows to around 1.2 to 1.6 m (3.9 to 5.2 ft) in length and weighs between 9 and 20 kg (20 and 44 lb). Exceptionally large males can reach as much as 2.3 m (7.5 ft) in length and 36 kg (79 lb) in weight.

Olyreae is a tribe of grasses in the bamboo subfamily (Bambusoideae). Unlike the other two bamboo tribes, Olyreae are herbaceous and do not have a woody stem. Their sister group are the tropical woody bamboos (Bambuseae).

Olyreae grow in the understorey of humid tropical forests. They are mainly distributed in the Neotropics around the Amazon Basin but there is also one species from Africa, Olyra latifolia, and one from New Guinea, Buergersiochloa bambusoides.

When the Spanish arrived, they divided Peru into three main regions: the coastal region (11.6% of Peru), that is bounded by the Pacific Ocean; the highlands (28.1% of Peru), that is located on the Andean Heights, and the jungle, that is located on the Amazonian Jungle (Climate of Peru). But Javier Pulgar Vidal (es), a geographer who studied the biogeographic reality of the Peruvian territory for a long time, proposed the creation of eight Natural Regions. In 1941, he presented his thesis "Las Ocho Regiones Naturales del Perú" at the III General Assembly of the Pan-American Institute of Geography and History.

The Bolivian river dolphin is a species (Inia boliviensis) or subspecies (Inia geoffrensis boliviensis) of freshwater dolphin found in upstream areas of the Amazon Basin.

Peru has many languages in use, with its official languages being Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. Spanish was introduced by conquistadors in the 1500s; it began being taught in the time of José Pardo instead of the country's Native languages, especially the languages in the Andes. In the beginning of the 21st century, it was estimated that in this multilingual country, about 50 very different and popular languages are spoken: which reduces to 44 languages if dialects are considered variants of the same language. The majority of these languages are Indigenous, but the most common language is Spanish, the main language that about 94.4% of the population speaks. Spanish is followed by the country's Indigenous languages, especially all types of Quechua (13.9% combined) and Aymara (1.7%), who also have co-official status according to Article 48 of the Constitution of Peru, as well as the languages of the Amazon and the Peruvian Sign Language. In urban areas of the country, especially the coastal region, most people are monolingual and only speak Spanish, while in many rural areas of the country, especially in the Amazon, multilingual populations are prevalent.

Victoria amazonica ("giant water lily") is a species of flowering plant, the second largest in the water lily family Nymphaeaceae. It is called Vitória-Régia or Iaupê-Jaçanã ("the jacana's waterlily") in Brazil and Atun Sisac ("great flower") in Inca (Quechua). Its native region is tropical South America, specifically Guyana and the Amazon Basin.

Puyo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpuʝo]), also known as El Puyo, is the capital of Pastaza, a province in Ecuador. Puyo is located at an altitude of approximately 950 metres above sea level by the Puyo River, a tributary of the Pastaza River, which eventually leads into the Amazon River. True to its name, derived from the Kichwa word for "cloudy", the local climate is a wet one and the weather is often overcast.

Puyo was founded in 1899. Located between Baños, and the Amazonian cities of Tena and Macas, Puyo is the commercial, cultural and political capital of the region. In late 2006, the city had approximately 25,000 inhabitants. It was the fastest growing city in Ecuador in 2006. The seasonal changes in the climate are relatively small, and daytime temperature typically range between 18 and 24 °C, with sun and generally short, but heavy periods of rain daily.