Meeting of Waters
The Meeting of the Waters: Amazon (left ), Rio Negro ( right)
The Encontro das Aguas ( Meeting of the Waters ) refers to the confluence of the Rio Solimões, as the Amazon is called up here, and Rio Negro. It is located about ten kilometers from Manaus. The special thing is that both have a very different color ( brownish- yellowish Rio Solimões, Rio Negro black) and the two streams gradually mix.
The colors
The Amazon, a white water river, due to the high content of mineral suspended matter has a dirty lehmfarbenes appearance. The really light brown color appears only in oblique view white.
The Rio Negro, a blackwater river gets its color due to the high content of humic and fulvic acids, which have been washed by the rain in its 720 114 square kilometer catchment area from the already heavily leached, sandy soils.
The confluence
It should first be mentioned that meet the largest river in the world ( Amazon) with the second largest tributary of the Earth (Rio Negro) here. However, this massive volume of water flowing into each other immediately, but eleven kilometers in the same river bed side by side before you mixed water and the river again has a uniform color. The colored border of the two rivers is clearly seen both on satellite images as well as from a ship.
The reasons
The reasons for this lie in Natureignisses the different characteristics of the rivers. On the one hand, the Rio Negro with 3.5 a relatively acidic pH, resulting from the humic substances present in the water, while the Rio Solimoes ( Amazon) 7.5 has a basic pH. The flow rate of the two rivers differs by a factor of three. The Rio Solimoes flows significantly slower at 7.5 kilometers per hour, the Rio Negro 2.5. Due to the color of the two rivers also their temperatures differ. The clay- white Solimões reflects the sunlight and is always colder than 22 degrees Celsius, while the black Rio Negro it absorbed and reaches temperatures over 28 degrees. Due to the different temperature of the rivers also their density differs significantly.
- Geography (Amazonas, Brazil)