Slide 8 of 39
Notes:
Source: http://pathfinder-www.sr.unh.edu/~dave/papers/science1/index.html
Each map shows the Amazon River Basin, with the mouth at upper right. The small inset map top right locates the basin in South America. The white areas are untouched forest, with increasing deforestation denoted by dark blue through green and yellow to red. The large brown area at right is natural grassland, where it is too dry for forest to grow.
These maps are derived from LANDSAT satellite images at 100 m resolution, taken at the same time of year but 10 years apart. Note how the right hand map has substantially more cleared areas (all colors than white or brown), mostly in the South and East and along the main branch of the Amazon river in the North. These are where access is easiest. The routes of highways are clearly marked.
Particularly revealing is the pattern greatly enlarged in the inset at bottom left. This shows a rapidly expanding pattern of land clearance (red) along side roads which branch from a highway running approximately south east - north west through the state of Rondonia which constructed around 1972. These are basically “homestead lots” being cleared to rough pasture by new settlers immigrating along the highway. As the settlers work out from their local side road, the colors in the larger scale map become steadily more green, then yellow, then red, indicating less and less of forest remains.