Gold mining ravages Southern Peru. Greg Asner, Carnegie Airborne Observatory.

Mapping the Peruvian Amazon, with MAAP

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, things are changing…quickly.

Planet Labs recently imaged the leading edge of a large mine in Southern Peru, with the camp of workers plainly visible. But when we showed the imagery to our colleague, Matt Finer, from the Amazon Conservation Association, he looked south. Finer recognized immediately that the activity below the main stem of the river was illegal encroachment into Tambopata National Reserve.

How? He’d seen it just a few weeks before, in one of his own deforestation alerts.

A Planet Dove images the leading edge of a massive gold mine in Southern Peru. South of the Tambopata River, the mining is illegal. Acquired January 29, 2016.

Finer operates “MAAP” — Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project. Supported by the Amazon Conservation Association and other partners, MAAP tracks deforestation and forest degradation throughout Peru, where the Andean foothills give way to the vast Amazon basin. After Brazil, Peru holds more of the Amazon forest than any other nation. With a recent pledge to achieve zero net deforestation, Peru has made progress — but the work of halting deforestation is enormous. By tracking deforestation in satellite and other imagery, MAAP helps serve the most current knowledge of forest loss in Peru.

As a Planet Ambassador, Finer can add Planet’s unique dataset to his toolkit. Already, deforestation outside of Iberia — a town on the Interoceanic Highway — has been observed.

Image courtesy maaproject.org, data from USGS, Planet Labs, PNCB/MINAM, UMD/GLAD.

While analyses of forest loss are many, one of the things that helps MAAP alerts rise above the fray is the insights provided by Finer and his team. Like Finer, many of his staff have intimate knowledge of the forest landscapes of Peru, where many have worked as researches and conservationists for years. Thus, while they produce maps of forest change of all sorts, the MAAP team specializes in breaking patterns down into straightforward analyses and insights that can readily be ingested by law enforcement, resource management professionals and the policy process in Peru.

For more on MAAP, check out this Mongabay profile. And for more Planet imagery of Peru’s spectacularly diverse forests and the threats they face — stay tuned to Finer and company at maaproject.org.