The world’s attention has turned to the Amazon as the biome’s major rivers have reached their lowest level. Unprecedented drought has turned once-mighty riverbeds into large sandbanks, creating an apocalyptic landscape with harsh impacts on local communities. In Brazil, the most critical situation happens in the Madeira River, which crosses Amazonas and Rondônia states. According to official data, it hit 79 centimeters (31 inches) on Sep. 9 in the city of Porto Velho, 33 cm (13 in) below the lowest level ever registered, in October 2023. Other major rivers, like the Negro, the Solimões and the Purus, also have broken their September records when comparing their levels with the same period in the last decades. The sinuous Purus river, for example, which is born in Peru and crosses Acre and Amazonas states, measured 7.5 meters (24.6 feet) on Sept. 9 in the Amazonas city of Beruri, 2.2 m (7.2 ft lower than the previous record, registered on the same day in 1983. “From the data we have at the moment and what is expected in terms of rainfall, we can say that this could be the most serious drought the Amazon has ever experienced,” Adriana Cuartas, a hydrology researcher at the National Center for Monitoring and Warning Natural Disasters, CEMADEN, told Mongabay. Indigenous people like the Tukanos, whose villages usually stand on the shores of rivers, now must walk many kilometers before reaching their homes. Image courtesy of Juliana Pesqueira/Amazônia Real (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) All these rivers flow into the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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