Woods Hole Research Center

Field Notes

January - February 2012: Science on the Amazon

"Raimundo has done this for more than 30 years, the simple process producing one of the most important hydrological datasets on the entire planet – the daily discharge record of the world’s largest river.”

– Dr. Mike Coe while on an exploratory trip on the world’s largest river.

Day 8 (Monday, January 30): We woke in Santerém feeling recovered from the long hours of traveling we had been subjected to in the previous days. We spent the day meeting with our collaborators in Santerém, also enjoying a spectacular fish dinner – including Tambaqui, Tucanarei, Surubim, and Piraracu from the Amazon. The fact that it rained enough throughout dinner to turn the restaurant floor into a small rushing river only added to our tropical experience.

Day 9 (Tuesday, January 31): At sunrise we boarded a Piper airplane and flew upriver to Óbidos a beautiful old colonial town on the banks of the Amazon. The River was beautiful as always, now visible to us beneath a layer of dense wet-season clouds. We spent the day with our colleagues on the river as they collected water samples and measured various physical attributes. The water temperature was 86 Fahrenheit and the river was more than 260 feet deep in the middle!

Day 10 (Wednesday, February 1): Today produced an unexpected high point on our trip. While touring the confluence of the Trombetas River, with the main stream of the Amazon at Óbidos, we stopped for a visit with 72 year-old Raimundo Nunes. Raimundo lives in a single room wood and palm frond home he built on the south shore of the Amazon across from the city of Óbidos. He makes his living by hunting and fishing.

Additionally, twice each day at 7:00 am and 5:00 pm he reads the level of the Amazon River as it appears on stakes in his front yard and records the result in a book. Every three months he travels across the river to Óbidos to deliver his record to the office of the Brazilian National Water Agency and to pick up the next empty book. Then he hurries back to be home for his 5:00 pm reading. Raimundo has done this for more than 30 years, the simple process producing one of the most important hydrological datasets on the entire planet – the daily discharge record of the world’s largest river.

We, and researchers throughout the world, have been using Raimundo’s data for decades to better understand the climatology of the tropics. Our understanding of how climate is changing in the Amazon, how it responds to deforestation and changing ocean temperatures, and our speculations on what might happen to the Amazon in the future are all founded on this one dataset maintained by Raimundo. We really can’t overstate the contribution he has made to our scientific understanding of the Amazon River. We look forward to visiting him again.