Rivers&Streams+Home

=__ // Welcome to the Rivers&Streams Homepage! // __=

__By: Eric K. and Kevin P.__
We are going to compare three rivers, The Amazon River, The Grand River, and the Mississippi River! Click on the links below to visit our other pages! Rivers are located on every continent except for Antarctica. They are widespread across nearly every biome, even the desert!



= //__ The Amazon River __// =

The Amazon River is located in northern South America. It has an average rainfall of three centimeters a day or 1016 centimeters a year. Compared to many other river areas, this is a lot of rainfall! In fact, the Amazon River accounts for about 1/5 of the world's river flow. During the wet season, the Amazon River can sometimes exceed 190 kilometers in width! It is very disputable that the Amazon River is the second longest river in the world, closely following the Nile at about 4100 kilometers, compared to the Nile's 4200 kilometers. However, the Amazon is quite clearly much bigger, and hosts more water, than the Nile River, covering almost 40% of South Africa. It has an area of approximately 6,915,000 kilometers. The Amazon River's main water source is located 5 degrees North latitude to 20 degrees south latitude. The area covered by the water of the Amazon River is 110,000 kilometers during the dry season. However, during the wet season, this more than triples to 350,000 kilometers! It is about 20% of the world's total volume of freshwater draining into the ocean.

Many major rivers flow into the Amazon River. Some include the Morona, Pastaza, Nucuray, Urituyacu, Chambira, Tigre, Nanay, Napo, Huallaga, and the Ucayali rivers. The most distant source of the Amazon River, established in 1996, 2001, and 2007, is a glacial stream on top of a large mountain, Nevado Mismi.

Many branches in the Amazon River flood in November, and continue rising until June. The height of the Amazon river in the rainy season is approximately 40 meters, and the width can be up to 40 kilometers! The main river, approximately 10 kilometers wide, is very easy to navigatable by steamers nearly 1,500 kilometers upriver!

The temperature rarely drops below 20 degrees Celsius or rises above 34 degrees Celsius. However, the average temperature for the Amazon River is 26.1 degrees Celsius all year around. Temperature between night and day are more different than the seasonal differences.

=//__​ The Grand River __//=

The Grand River is located in eastern Michigan, and is 420 kilometers long. The average temperature near the Grand River is 8.564 degrees Celsius. The average rainfall here, opposed to the Amazon River, is only 91.927 centimeters a year, or 0.25168 centimeters a day. This is nearly 1/11 of the Amazon River's rainfall!

The Grand River covers 9108.8 square kilometers of land, and drains portions of Muskegon, Newaygo, Mecosta, Montcalm, Gratiot, Ottawa, Kent, Ionia, Clinton, Shiawasee, Barry, Eaton, Ingham, Livingston, and Jackson counties in Michigan. Land use inside of the watershed is 53% agricultural, 27% urban and 20% forested. =__// The Mississippi River //__=

The Mississippi River goes from the North to South in the United States. It is an extremely long river, reaching 3730 Kilometers in length and thus it is hard to get an average precipitation. However, we will take the centre of the river which, is approximately Memphis, Tennessee. The average rainfall for Memphis, Tennessee is 138.811 centimeters, and the average temperature 16.819 degrees celsius.

In 1993, there was a great flood concerning the Mississippi River as well. It was considered one of the most devastating floods of the United States of America, flooding much of Mississippi.

The Mississippi River drains much of the water between the Rocky Mountains to the West and the Appalachian Mountains to the East. Before the river was leveed, the sediments carried by the river were dispersed all throughout Louisiana. However, this ended in 1927, when the river was leveed by the Corps of Engineers. ۫


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