Satellite deforestation tracking offers weapon
LIMA: In 2015, satellite images detected a fresh clearing of rainforest in an indigenous reserve deep in the Amazon.
Within months, authorities in Peru had evicted the wildcat miners driving the deforestation, a rare victory in a region where a gold rush has laid waste to large swathes of pristine forest.
The rapid response was possible thanks to better use of satellite technology that now allowed deforestation to be tracked in near realtime, giving governments ‘‘unprecedented’’ opportunities to take action, said Matt Finer, the lead author of a paper on the trend in the latest issue of Science.
Instead of years passing before learning about a new deforestation hot spot, authorities could track it in weeks or months.
‘‘Most tropical countries now cannot say, ‘well, we didn’t have the information, or we didn’t have the information on time’,’’ said Finer, a research specialist at the organisation Amazon Conservation, which spotted the 2015 clearing in Peru’s Amarakaeri Communal Reserve.
Satellites have gradually been capturing more frequent images of the world’s tropical forests with greater detail. In recent years, researchers at the University of Maryland developed an automated earlywarning system to notify authorities of likely forest loss, said Finer.
Algorithms can further filter the data by pointing to particularly troublesome patterns, such as the loss of green forest cover inside protected reserves or lines suggesting new roads have been cut through primary rainforest, Finer said.
Daniel Castillo, the head of a team in Peru’s environment ministry that uses the technology, said finding out about deforestation early on could keep it from spinning out of control. He pointed to the expansion of illegal gold mining in southern Peru that is now a key driver of the region’s economy.
‘‘We have all the tools to be able tell when this kind of phenomena occurs; we only really need effective action,’’ Castillo said. — Reuters
❛ We have all the tools to be able tell
when this kind of phenomena occurs; we only really need effective action