In 1542, Francisco de Orellana led the first European voyage down the Amazon River. During thisvoyage the explorers met a lot of resistance ( 进) from the local Indians. In one particular tribe thewomen fighters were so fierce that they drove their male fighters in front of them with spears. Thus theriver was named after the famous women fighters of the ancient Greek stories , the AmazonsThis voyage also started our wonder of the greatest river and the largest area of rainforest in theworld. About 20% of all fresh water carried to the oceans is from the Amazon River. The Amazon basinis the world's largest, about the size of Europe. The river is a product of the rainy season , which bringshuge rains every summer. This also produces a large area of rainforest, which supports the largestnumber of diverse plants and animals of anv area in the world.
when it comes to the future of global warming, as it is aThe Amazon rainforest is also importanthuge natural store of carbon. Up until recently it was thought that the Amazon had fully grown and thusshown this could be wrong and that the Amazorcould not take up any more CO..Experiments haverainforest might be sucking up an additional five tons of CO, from the atmosphere per hectare (公increased CO.: because it is the rwimaterial fooer year.his is because nlants react favorablySo having more CO, in the atmosphere acts like aphotosynthesis(米用the more of it the better.fertilizer, stimulating plant growth. Because of the size of the Amazon rainforest, it seems that presentlyit is taking up a large percentage of our CO, pollution in the atmosphere, about 75% of the world’s carpollution.
48. After whom was the Amazon River named?
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