December 5, 2008
Amazon rainforest destruction viewed from space
1992: 
2006: 
Dense green vegetation gives way to pale fields in these newly released satellite images of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. The first image, from the Landsat Thematic Mapper in 1992, shows the beginning of agricultural development in a region of the southwestern state of Mato Grosso. It dissolves into a recently released image of the same area in 2006 from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission Radiometer (ASTER) instrument flying on NASA’s Terra satellite. In 1992, about 25 percent of the region shown had been clear-cut for pastures and farms, mostly in the southern part of the area. Less than two decades later, more than 80 percent of the rainforest had been cut down.
