Thursday, May 24, 2018

Spy Satellites Spy Shrinking Rain Forest


North Carolina State University has used historical aerial imagery captured by the Corona spy satellite in the 1960's & 1970's to track the loss of the Atlantic Forest. The Atlantic Forest is a rainforest located in the border area between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Over 85% of the Atlantic Forest has now been lost to deforestation.

The Making of a Forest is an Esri story map which uses three different sources to visualize how the rainforest has shrunk over the last seventy years. As well as using historical imagery from the Corona satellite the North Carolina State University analyzed historical aerial photography captured by the Brazilian government in the 1950's & 1980's and Landsat satellite imagery dating back to the 1970's.

As you progress through The Making of a Forest you can view the fixed-wing imagery and satellite imagery from different decades overlaid on top of a map of the Atlantic Forest. This imagery shows how the parts of the rainforest which are now inside the Brazilian and Argentinian national parks in the area are very healthy. Outside of the national parks what was once the Atlantic Forest is now mainly farmland.

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