species of trees in the world. Therefore, Amazonia is home to 19% of the world’s tree species. It is home to the world’s largest genetic bank on solid land or the largest botanical garden on the planet. Its connections with economic processes need to be better measured because of its importance for mankind’s future.
In the words of Barata (2012): “the Amazonian forest has registered 2,000 medicinal species used by the local population as medicines, in addition to 1,250 aromatic species producing essential oils. However, only three aromatic species are part of Amazonia’s export and trade agenda: cumaru beans, copaíba and rosewood essential oil.” In short, this is a complex natural laboratory open to biotechnological innovations.
Research also indicates that Amazonian forests have 350 tons of biomass per hectare and produce annually 7.5 tons of vegetable litter (branches and leaves) per hectare, one of the largest world sources of renewable biomass on a solid surface. According to Antony (1997), in the forest on the Anavilhanas Archipelago, in Central Amazonia, which is subject to periodic flooding, a population of microbes with 116,409 individuals per m2 was found in a superficial layer 10 cm deep. ←6 | 7→Recent studies also reveal the existence of approximately 300 species of trees with a diameter of more than 10 cm per hectare in Brazilian Amazonian forests, exceeding the total number of species in Europe. The productive chains associated with bioindustry and with the chemistry of natural products need to be developed in the region.
About 20% of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed since 1970. The large economic projects installed in the region and biomass burning are the main actors in these predatory processes. Large gas and particle emissions from burning have a strong impact on its biomes and the composition of its atmosphere. Change in the cloud formation process, modification of cycles of various chemical elements such as ozone, important to the forest’s stability, and the impact on the interaction between the electromagnetic radiation, light, and the forest affecting the entire photosynthetic chain are perverse effects of biomass burning in this region (Artaxo et al., 2005). Several ongoing research programs seek to understand and measure the range and the regional and planetary impacts of these processes, particularly on the greenhouse effect and climate change.
These features of Amazonia present challenges to forest engineering, to basic sciences, and particularly to biology, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and to engineering of new materials making possible new forms of management, and the production of new methodologies and sustainable products in the tropical rainforest basin.
The Brazilian government’s political inability to propose forms of public-private partnership to exploit Amazonia’s natural wealth, maintaining the forest preserved in a sustainable way, has sacrificed several generations of Brazilians. Financing Amazonia’s economic and social development requires high investments, about US$1 trillion during ten consecutive years, in strategic Amazonian projects. The origin and application of these financial resources constitute a political action that needs to be executed, with public support, in the face of possible opposition from the hegemonic political interests of Brazil’s south and southeast regions, mainly.
The Amazonian rainforest basin presents itself as a “water world.” Its social and economic processes, its history and myths, geography, productive arrangements, and culture are driven by the cycles of nature permeated by the cycles of water and energy. Animal and plant life in Amazonia is inseparable from the cycles of nature. The meteorological sciences, agroecology, naval engineering, tropical medicine, anthropology, sociology of science, pharmacology, tropical technologies with emphasis on fish farming, information and communication technology, food technologies, ecological mining, design, and ecotourism, among others, are areas of science and technology essential to its sustainable development. Through research, ←7 | 8→innovation, and development programs; the integration and sustainable socioeconomic use of the Pan-Amazonian water basin is urgently needed. This is another Amazonian challenge.
The Amazonian region is crossed by the Amazonas River, which drains more than 7 million km2 of land and has an average annual outflow of approximately 176,000 m3/sec (176 million L/s). This makes it the world’s largest river by volume of water, approximately four times the volume of the Congo River in Africa (second largest) and ten times the volume of the Mississippi River. In the dry season, the flows of Amazonas River into the sea at about 100,000 m3/sec and at more than 300,000 m3/sec in the flooding season (Sioli, 1991). The Amazonas River is also the longest and widest on the planet. It is about 6,992 km long and 8–10 km wide in the periods of low water and up to 50 km wide, in flat regions, in the flooding season. It can be up to 100 meters deep.
Based on the RADAM (Radar Project of Amazonia) inventory and other reference sources, Junk (1993) estimated that 20–25% of Amazonia’s territory is periodically flooded. The high rainfall and the relief of the region favor this phenomenon, which covers about 1 million km2 of its biomes. Junk’s studies (1989) show that it is possible to measure the impacts of this phenomenon on the structures and processes that control the distribution of plants and animals, the primary and secondary production, and the nutrient cycles, among other important factors for the stability of these wetland forests.
The term “wetland forests” is used by Junk to refer to all types of forest subject to irregular, seasonal, or long-term flooding. Since Pre-Columbian times, this vast region has been inhabited by thousands of riverside residents who practice family farming and have livestock, causing only minor environmental impacts, and extract from nature only the products needed for their survival and trade with local organizations. Nowadays, this picture is in the process of major change due to the heavy pressure exerted by large logging companies, farmers, cattle ranchers, and large-scale fishing. These flooded forests play an important role in controlling primary production, carbon stock, and various biogeochemical cycles in the region, which is home to more than 1,000 species of trees (Junk and Piedade, 2010). Clearly, they, too, have connections with the control of climate change exerted by Amazonia. Its conservation and sustainable management and development is a challenge for Brazil.
Recent geological evidence also indicates the existence of an underground river about 6,900 km long, under the Amazonas River, at a depth of 4,000 meters. This underground river has a flow of 3 million liters (3,000 m3/s). The two water courses flow in the same direction-from west to east-but possess different physical behaviors (Pimentel, 2013). Several international geological studies seek to understand the characteristics of this complex river basin.
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The Amazonian basin has low demographic density and one of highest rainfall indices on the planet, with an average of 2,200 mm per year (1 mm of rainfall corresponds to 1 liter of water per square meter). This represents an annual total volume of water of 12 × 1012 m3 (12 quadrillion liters), resulting in the world’s largest rainforest (Salati et al., 1983). The region has more than 1,000 rivers forming the hydrological network necessary for its ecological and social integration.
Evapotranspiration is an important phenomenon for the thermodynamic stability of plants. Through this process, the leaves of each tree in Amazonia release about 300 to 1,000 liters of water per day into the atmosphere. This immense amount of steam rises to the atmosphere’s upper layers forming the so-called flying rivers, which have a strong impact on regional and continental atmospheric processes. Researchers (Pinedo-Vasquez et al., 2013;
