Mouth of the Amazon River

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Flowing over 6450 kilometers eastward across Brazil, the Amazon River originates in the Peruvian Andes as tiny mountain streams that eventually combine to form one of the world's mightiest rivers. This image of the Amazon's mouth was captured by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) vertical-viewing (nadir) camera on September 8, 2000 during Terra orbit 3862. The image is approximately 380 kilometers in width.

While the Amazon is surpassed in length by the Nile, it carries the largest volume of freshwater in the world, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the Earth's discharge into the oceans. Millions of cubic feet of water empty into the Atlantic every second, and the effluent is transported vast distances from the shore.

Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/JPL, MISR Team