Google shows advance of deforestation in the Amazon until 2022 – 04/04/2023 – Environment

Google announced this Tuesday (4) that Google Earth now includes images of the advance of deforestation in the Amazon until 2022. Jair Bolsonaro.

The technology giant also announced the launch of an early detection system for fires, in partnership with Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), and the expansion of flood alerts, in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Brazil (CPRM).

The announcements were made at the Sustainability with Google – Amazônia event, which takes place in Belém (PA).

With records of satellite images since 1984, Google Earth has a timelapse tool (see below) that now shows in detail the changes in forest cover in the last two years.

The mechanism used to generate the images, Google Earth Engine, is already used by researchers to monitor the use of natural resources, as in the case of the Mapbiomas platform. The project was created in 2019 and carries out annual mapping of land use and water surface, in addition to monthly monitoring of fire scars.

Watch the videos below for timelapses that show the progress of deforestation:

“This type of historical series is also useful for local communities to raise awareness of their problems,” says Rebecca Moore, director of geospatial initiatives at Google.

One of the first people to use the tool was the Paiter Suruí.

“Technology today is very important for us, indigenous peoples, not only in protecting territories, but also in taking our cosmology and our understanding of the world to other places, who think that there is only their world”, says the activist Txai Suruí, columnist for Sheet.

She also says that turning your eyes to the forest helps to show that the struggle to keep the Amazon standing is a collective one and that the answers to this lie in traditional knowledge. “If there is a future, it is ancestral.”

The history of searches on the site shows an increase in interest in environmental issues. In the last ten years, searches on Google for the term “Amazônia”, for example, have risen by more than 80% in Brazil. Worldwide, the increase was more than 40%.

In addition, “weather” and “climate” are among the ten most searched words in the country since the beginning of the historical series, in 2004.

Nubia Quilombola, an educator from Amapa, explains that the mapping done by Google Earth made it possible to point out exactly where gaps and conflicts are. “We were able to show: there is no school here, a quilombola died here [em disputa] by land, for example.”

“We took the Federal University of Amapá to teach preparatory courses for professors and researchers to combat environmental racism”, he says. “That’s the only way we realized how the public power’s lack of will excludes our people from the Amazon.”

For the new fire detection system, artificial intelligence will be used that identifies fire spots in the early stages through satellite images. Early combat facilitates containment of fires, avoiding the release of large amounts of CO_two In the atmosphere.

The project is still in the initial phase of model development, and there is no forecast for it to come into effect.

The flood alerts, which have been operating in Brazil since 2022, were expanded to include 27 cities. The system issues real-time warnings on the search page and on Google Maps when heavy rains warrant public attention.

The forecast is that the network will be expanded to 20 more municipalities in the first half of 2023.

_{The reporter traveled to Belém at the invitation of Google.}