Deforestation in the Amazon

NASA Visualization Studio

This NASA animation on land cover change zooms into Rondonia, Brazil. It starts with a Landsat satellite image taken in 1975 and dissolves into a second image of the same region taken in 2009 that illustrates a significant amount of land use change.

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Notes from our reviewers

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It is suggested that this be used as part of a unit on ecosystems and climate change. There is no color key provided for the images. However, the images clearly indicate significant land cover change.
Tropical forests act as major carbon 'sinks', places where ambient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be absorbed by growing things and sequestered for years. Data taken in 1975 and 2009 from the Landsat series of spacecraft shows enormous tracts of forest disappearing in Rondonia, Brazil. Comments from expert scientist: Short and easy to read piece on a globally important topic. Visuals clearly show the effect of deforestation on land cover. There are a number of other similar NASA websites that seem more up to date.