Photographs by Musuk Nolte

Threaded throughout the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, is a system of rivers. More than 1,000 tributaries collect rain and glacial runoff from a basin nearly the size of the contiguous United States. They gather into a waterway so expansive that oceangoing vessels can travel 900 miles inland from the Atlantic coast and dock at the river port of Manaus, Brazil.

Musuk NolteTwo fishermen push a boat toward a stretch of still-navigable water next to Lago do Aleixo, east of Manaus.

At least under normal circumstances. A drought that began in 2023 deepened last year into the worst in the Amazon’s recorded history. In Manaus, a sprawling city of more than 2 million, the depth of the Rio Negro, a major branch of the Amazon River, reached an all-time low of 40 feet in October, almost 25 feet lower than would be typical at that time of year. The Peruvian photographer Musuk Nolte has documented the drought’s impact on Manaus’s outlying communities. Many residents live in houses meant to float on the water; the drought has left them effectively shipwrecked. One river trader, who typically transported his bananas by boat, told Nolte that he was forced to carry them overland in 104-degree heat. Others saw no choice but to abandon the lives they’d always known and try their luck in the urban tumult of Manaus itself.

Musuk NolteLeft: Falling water levels have made it difficult for Raimundo Silva Do Carmo, a river trader, to navigate the area around Puraquequara, where he works. Right: A river trader stands on the deck of his family’s home, which used to float on the river.

Through years of reporting in the Amazon, I’ve gotten to know the region well. Viewing Nolte’s photos is like waking up in an alternate reality: a sea turned to desert. But the transformation shouldn’t come as a surprise. Over the past 50 years, an area of the rainforest larger than the state of Texas has been razed to make way for farmland and cattle pasture. Scientists have long warned that this could disrupt the virtuous cycle through which trees fuel rain clouds by releasing water vapor. Nolte’s photos seem to show the results.

Musuk NolteFishermen traverse a dry riverbed in Manacapuru, a city west of Manaus.

One of his images features a mostly dry riverbed, its sand mysteriously streaked. Nolte told me that the marks had been left by outboard motors riding perilously low as water levels plunged. He calls them scars, visible signs of a wounded planet.

This article appears in the March 2025 print edition with the headline “Shipwrecked in the Amazon.”