The Amazon River carries more water than the next seven largest rivers in the world combined.

The Amazon River basin covers about 7 million square kilometers across eight different countries. This area includes Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. The river provides about 20% of all the freshwater that enters the world's oceans. In 2007, researchers used satellite images to measure the river at 6,992 kilometers long.During the rainy season, the river can grow to be 40 kilometers wide in some areas. The water reaches depths of 100 meters near the town of Óbidos in Brazil. More than 1,100 smaller rivers flow into the main Amazon River. Seventeen of these smaller rivers are more than 1,500 kilometers long.The force of the water creates a freshwater plume in the Atlantic Ocean. This plume covers 1.3 million square kilometers where freshwater and saltwater mix. There are no bridges across the main part of the Amazon River. The river changes width constantly and the surrounding rainforest has very few roads.The amount of water moving through the river is difficult to imagine. It releases enough water to fill Lake Ontario every three hours. This massive flow makes it the largest river in the world by volume.