Use of Formosat-2 Satellite Imagery to Detect Near Real Time Deforestation in Amazonia

The Brazilian Federal State of Acre has decided to reinforce its deforestation alert system during the dry season at the frontier between Peru and Bolivia. With traditional methods (based on aerial digital photography and GPS measurements) illegal deforestation statistics and geographical location could not be available in time to avoid new forest clearings. Therefore a new method has been implemented to provide fast and near-real time deforestation maps in this region using FORMOSAT-2 satellite. The access to FORMOSAT-2 resource was made through a dedicated Web interface. The satellite resource has been reserved during 2.5 months over the East part of the Federal State of Acre in order to organize 9 successive coverages (1160 images). The resulting deforestation maps were delivered to the Environment agency of the Acre State and to NGOs in very short delay, in order to plan field interventions to stop illegal deforestation in progress.