Satellites That Catch Amazon Deforestation in Real Time

Amazon Conservation Association, working through Peruvian and Bolivian partner organizations, protects Amazon rainforest through land conservation, science, and its Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), launched in 2015. MAAP combines satellite imagery from five different systems to detect deforestation and illegal gold mining across the entire Amazon basin in near-real time, publishing evidence used directly by governments to plan enforcement raids. After Peru's 2019 Operation Mercury targeted illegal gold mining in the La Pampa region, MAAP-documented deforestation there dropped sharply within a year.