Weather and Environmental Impacts in BrazilManaus is a remote city located in a rainforest, so obviously there is a large influence of the weather on the environment around Manaus. Each year it receives about 84 inches of rain, inches of rain that lead to the weather's first environmental impact: flooding. Manaus is located near the confluence of two large rivers, the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimoes, which join slightly east of Manaus from the Amazon River. The land is relatively flat and therefore serves as a flood basin for rivers. The average annual river fall can be approximately 33 feet (1). Floods pose a risk to humans as they can threaten cities and homes, but there are also important ecological benefits from flooding. Flood forests along the river provide important habitat for fish, particularly juvenile fish, which can use the root structure of trees to avoid predation (1). A potentially more controversial outcome of the floods is that flooded fields are an important source of atmospheric methane, as well as good soils for growing. (1) Methane is a greenhouse gas, which may lead some individuals to call for flood control in the lowlands in an effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil. There is a dam built on the Manaus River, but there have been problems with the Amazon dams. Because of the rainforest, large amounts of plant debris end up in rivers, where they become trapped behind dams and cause sedimentation, similar to silt in American rivers (2). Unlike North American sedimentation, however, Brazil's climate allows plant debris to rapidly break down, acidifying the water and releasing large amounts of methane into the air. The dam reservoir... middle of paper... becomes. Fires also put particulate matter into the air, which is classified as a pollutant. References http://www.op.dlr.de/ne-hf/SRL-2/p44721_mana2.html accessed 11/29/04 http://www. pacificislandtravel.com/south_america/brazil/about_destin/nature.html accessed 11/29/04http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~arm/amazonFires.html accessed 11/29/04http://www.ipcc .ch accessed 29/11/04Bruijnzeel, LA Hydrological functions of tropical forests: can't you see the soil for the trees? Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 104:1 185-228Durieux, L.; Machad, LAT; Laurent, H. The impact of deforestation on cloud cover over the Amazon deforestation arc. Remote Sensing of the Environment 86:1 132-140Agnello, HH Climate change and the modern world. New York, New York. Routledge 1995Somerville, RCJ The forgiving air. Berkeley, California. University of California Press 1996