Yasuni National Park, located in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is one of the most biodiverse places in the world thanks to its unique location at the intersection of the Amazon, Andes Mountains, and the equator (see Base Map). In addition, it is part of the ancestral territory of the Waorani indigenous peoples. The […]
Yasuní National Park, located in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is one of the most biodiverse spots in the world and overlaps ancestral Waorani territory. In the recent MAAP #114, we showed the construction of four new oil drilling platforms (and access road) in the controversial ITT oil block, located in the heart of […]
Yasuni National Park, located in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is one of the most biodiverse places in the world and forms part of the ancestral territory of the Waorani (see Base Map). Under the ground of this vast area, however, are large oil fields. In July 2019, the Waorani won an important legal […]
MAAP #82: Oil-related Deforestation in Yasuni National Park, Ecuadorian Amazon https://www.maapprogram.org/yasuni_eng/ Yasuni National Park, located in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is arguably the most biodiverse area in the world. It is also the ancestral territory of the Waorani, and their relatives in voluntary isolation. However, underneath the park are large oil fields, setting up the constant conflict looming over […]
In part 1 of this series (MAAP #215), we introduced a critical new dataset (Planet’s Forest Carbon Diligence) with wall-to-wall estimates for aboveground carbon at an unprecedented 30-meter resolution between 2013 and 2022. This data uniquely merges machine learning, satellite imagery, airborne lasers, and a global biomass dataset from GEDI, a NASA mission. In part […]
A pair of recent scientific studies revealed that parts of the Amazon now emit more carbon into the atmosphere than they absorb (Gatti et al 2021, Harris et al 2021). Here, we dig deeper and highlight the key finding: the Brazilian Amazon has become a net carbon source over the past 20 years, whereas the […]
MAAP, an initiative of Amazon Conservation, specializes in satellite-based, real-time deforestation monitoring of the Amazon. Our geographic focus covers five countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru (see Base Map). We found that, since 2001, this vast area lost 65.8 million acres (26.6 million hectares) of primary forest, an area equivalent to the size of […]
MAAP, an initiative of the organization Amazon Conservation, uses cutting-edge satellite technology to monitor deforestation in near real-time in the megadiverse Andean Amazon (Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia). The monitoring is based on 5 satellite systems: Landsat (NASA/USGS), Sentinel (European Space Agency), PeruSAT-1, and the companies Planet and DigitalGlobe. For more information about our innovative methodology, see this recent paper in Science Magazine. Launched in 2015, […]
MAAP #88: Deforestation Hotspots in the Ecuadorian Amazon https://www.maapprogram.org/ecuador-hotspots/ Here, we highlight deforestation hotspots, the areas with the highest deforestation densities, in the mega-diverse Ecuadorian Amazon. We then zoom in and focus on a dynamic area in the north that is located between three important protected areas (Sumaco, Yasuní y Cuyabeno). We show a series of satellite images that indicate […]
