Located in the heart of South America is the Amazon, the world's largest river.

It isn't just big, it is by almost any measure you can think of the world's largest river,

and it is so by a wide margin.

In addition to the river itself, the Amazon basin is the location of one of the greatest

collections of biodiversity on the planet.

It's home to millions of species of plants and animals.

Learn more about the Amazon, the world's largest river,

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. I've done several other episodes on the World's Great Rivers and in each one I always

end up referencing the Amazon. Given how big and important the river is I figured it was time for its own episode.

The Amazon River is the largest river in the world, and it isn't even close.

A full 20% of the world's fresh water that flows into the ocean comes from the

Amazon. On average, approximately 230,000 cubic meters or 8.1 million cubic feet of water flow to the Amazon each second.

To put that in perspective, it's more than the next seven largest rivers in the world

combined.

There is so much water flowing out of the Amazon that the sea level in the Caribbean is 3 centimeters

higher than it should be because of all the water carried north by the Caribbean current.

If you remember back to my episode on the Nile River, the Nile might be the longest river in

the world, or it might be the Amazon. The reason for the debate has to do with the fact that the

length of both rivers are almost the same and there's no set way to define the

length of a river. The problem has to do with how you define the start and end of the Amazon, despite the region having been extensively mapped is still debated.

It's usually defined as the farthest point of continuously flowing water that can travel to the river's mouth.

However, what if the farthest point doesn't flow year round and sometimes dries up?

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