Drought brings Amazon tributary to lowest level in a century

By Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro, www.guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 26 October 2010 04.25 BST One of the most important tributaries of the Amazon river has fallen to its lowest level in over a century, following a fierce drought that has isolated tens of thousands of rainforest inhabitants and raised concerns about the possible impact of climate change on the region. The drought currently affecting swaths of north and west Amazonia has been described as the one of the worst in the last 40 years, with the Rio Negro or Black river, which flows into the world-famous Rio Amazonas, reportedly hitting its lowest levels since records began in 1902 on Sunday. In 24 hours the level of the Rio Negro near Manaus in Brazil dropped 6cm to 13.63 metres, a historic low. The Solimoes and Amazonas rivers have also seen their waters plunge since early August, stranding village dwellers who rely on the Amazon’s waterways for transport and food and marooning wooden boats on brown sand banks. … “In my whole life I have never seen a drought like this one,” 50-year-old river-dweller Manoel Alves Pereira told the local A Critica newspaper. … Rafael Cruz, a Greenpeace activist in Manaus who has been monitoring the drought, said that while the rise and fall of the Amazon’s rivers was a normal process, recent years had seen both extreme droughts and flooding become worryingly frequent. …