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A meadow is a field vegetated primarily by grass and other non-woody plants (grassland). It
may be cut for hay or grazed by livestock such as cattle, sheep or goats.
Contents
1 Agricultural meadow
2 Transitional meadows
3 Perpetual meadow
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
Agricultural meadow



Amazon River basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its
tributaries. The basin is located mainly (54%) in Brazil, but also stretches into Peru and several
other countries. The South American rain forest of the Amazon is the largest in the world,
covering about 8,235,430 km
2
with dense tropical forest. For centuries, this has protected the
area and the animals residing in it.
Contents
1 Plant life
2 Amazonian indigenous people
3 History
4 Cities
5 The land
6 Languages
7 External links
Plant life
Not all of the plant and animal life in the Amazon Basin are known because of its huge
unexplored areas. No one knows how many species of fish there are in the river. Plant growth is
dense because of the heavy rainfall. One tropical fruit tree that is native to the Amazon is the
abiu.
Amazonian indigenous people
The Amazon Basin includes a diversity of traditional inhabitants as well as biodiversity in both
flora and fauna. These peoples have lived in the rain forest for thousands of years, and their
lifestyles and cultures are well-adapted to this environment.
History
The Amazon basin has been continuously inhabited for more than 12,000 years, since the first
proven arrivals of people in South America. Those peoples, when found by European explorers
in the 16th century, were scattered in hundreds of small tribes with no writing system except for
the part ruled by the Inca Empire. Perhaps as many as 90% of the inhabitants died because of
European diseases within the first hundred years of contact, many tribes perished even before
direct contact with Europeans, as their germs traveled faster than explorers, infecting village
after village.
Upon the European discovery of America, the Portuguese and the Spanish signed the Treaty of
Tordesillas, which divided the continents in two: a large Spanish western part, which
encompassed all of then unknown North America and Central America, in addition to western
South America; while the Portuguese received Eastern South America, which later became
modern eastern Brazil. The Spanish claim was confirmed by explorers, most notably by the
expedition of Francisco de Orellana in 1541-42.
By the late 17th century Portuguese/Brazilian explorers had dominated much of the Amazon
basin because the mouth of the Amazon river lay within the Portuguese side, and the Brazilian
inward exploration venturers such as the Bandeirantes, who originated in So Paulo, had
conquered much of what is today central Brazil (states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul,
Gois) and then proceeded to the Amazon. In 1750 the Treaty of Madrid certified the transfer of
most of the Amazon basin and the region of Mato Grosso to the Portuguese side, hugely
contributing to the continental size of what is now Brazil.
Brazilian General Cndido Rondon is also reckoned as a major 19th century explorer of the
Amazon as well as a defender of its native peoples, the Brazilian state of Rondnia is named
after him.
In 1903 Brazil bought a large portion of northern Bolivia and made it its current state of Acre. In
2006 the new socialist Bolivian president Evo Morales talked about "getting it back. The
Brazilians got it for the price of a horse". No action was taken and the two nations remain
friendly. In the late 19th century, a US-Brazilian joint venture failed to implement the Madeira-
Mamor railway, in the state of Rondnia, with a huge cost in money and lives.
Intense deforestation began in the second half of the 20th century, with population growth and
development plans such as the failed Brazilian Trans-Amazonian Highway. In the late 1980s the
Brazilian Chico Mendes, who lived in Acre, became internationally famous for his passionate
defense of the forest and its people, especially after he was shot to death by farmers whose
interests he harmed.
Cities
Amazonia is not heavily populated. There are a few cities along the Amazon's banks, such as
Iquitos, Peru and scattered settlements inland, but most of the population lives in cities, such as
Manaus and Belem in Brazil. In many regions, the forest has been cleared for soy bean
plantations and ranching (the most extensive non-forest use of the land) and some of the
inhabitants harvest wild rubber latex and Brazil nuts. This is a form of extractive farms, where
the trees are not cut down, and thus this is a relatively sustainable human impact.
The land
The Amazon basin is bounded by the Guyana highlands in the north and the Brazilian highlands
in the south. The Amazon, which rises in the Andes Mountains at the west of the basin, is the
second longest river in the world. It covers a distance of about 6,400 km before draining into the
Atlantic Ocean. The Amazon and its tributaries form the largest volume of water. The Amazon
accounts for about 20% of the total water carried to the oceans by rivers.Some of the Amazon
Rainforest is deforested because of a growing interest in hardwood products. It is also very
grassy.
Languages
The most widely spoken language in the Amazon is Portuguese, followed closely by Spanish. On
the Brazilian side Portuguese is spoken by at least 98% of the population, whilst in the Spanish-
speaking countries there can still be found a large amount of speakers of Native American
languages, though Spanish easily predominates.
There are hundreds of native languages still spoken in the Amazon, most of which are spoken by
only a handful of people, and thus seriously endangered. One of the most widely spoken
languages in the Amazon is Nheengatu, which is actually descended from the ancient Tupi
language, originally spoken in coastal and central regions of Brazil, and brought to its present
location along the Rio Negro by Brazilian colonizers, who until the mid-17th century used Tupi
more than the official Portuguese to communicate. Besides modern Nheengatu, other languages
of the Tupi Family are spoken there, along with other language families like J (with its
important subbranch Jayapura spoken in the Xingu River region and others), Arawak, Karib,
Araw, Yanomamo, Matss and others. French, Spanish, and Portuguese are all similar to and
derived from Latin.

A meadow is a field vegetated primarily by grass and other non-woody plants (grassland). It
may be cut for hay or grazed by livestock such as cattle, sheep or goats.
Contents
1 Agricultural meadow
2 Transitional meadows
3 Perpetual meadow
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
Agricultural meadow
Especially in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the term meadow is commonly used in its original
sense to mean a haymeadow; grassland cut annually for hay (Old English mdwe). "Pasture" is
used in contrast for land which is primarily grazed, which may include grassland ("grass
pasture"), but also includes non-grassland habitats such as heathland, moorland and wood
pasture. "Grassland" is used to include both meadow and grass pasture.

Coastal meadow at the Bay of Biscay near Tapia de Casariego, Spain



Flood-meadow near Hohenau an der March, Austria


Quamash meadow near Bovill, Idaho

velvet grass

Medow brook