Recently, an animation created from NASA satellite views showed how alarming the deforestation in Peru is and how fast it is escalating, leading to a total of 206 square kilometers in a period of five years.
According to Live Science, these images were captured by satellites Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 between 2013 and 2018. “Shared on April 19 by NASA Earth Observatory, the animated sequence reveals devastating depletion in the forests of southeastern Peru’s Madre de Dios region, covering approximately 1,350 square miles (3,500 square kilometers)”, they informed.
Using a method that differentiates between types of land cover based on light properties pixel by pixel, Andrea Nicolau, a graduate research assistant at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, United States, was able to determine that about 206 square kilometers of forest disappeared in only five years.
Live Science also revealed that most of the deforestation took place between 2017 and 2018.
“The hardest-hit areas were found in buffer zones close to protected areas. Illegal gold mining is responsible for much of the deforestation on lands belonging to the indigenous Peruvian tribe known as Kotsimba Native Community”, Live science said.
