About MAAP

The Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), a project of the conservation nonprofit Amazon Conservation Association, is at the forefront of the field of high-tech, real-time monitoring. Launched in 2015, MAAP’s innovative application of satellite technology from multiple sources delivers actionable information that provides a transformational tool for governments and local people to rapidly detect deforestation as it is happening. MAAP currently covers 83% of the Amazon in 5 countries: Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia, and our findings have been featured in major English news sources such as Reuters, Mongabay, Mongabay LatAm, CNN, as well as key Spanish news sources such as Agencia Efe and El Diario.

MAAP’s methodology, published in Science in 2018, effectively combines remote sensing technologies (drones, radar, analytical algorithms, and more) to provide reports pinpointing the most urgent deforestation happening across the Amazon in real time, when responsive and preventative action is still possible.

MAAP can identify and determine the legality of deforestation at any scale and at any point across the entire Amazon basin – an area roughly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States. With a small team of 5 using smart technology tools, MAAP’s cost-effective model is accessible not only to governments as a long-term protection solution but also to local communities and indigenous groups that need to know where illegal activities and encroachment on their lands are happening on a daily basis.

Thanks to recent advances in satellite technology and analytical tools, MAAP is able to monitor every hectare of vast and remote areas quickly and thoroughly. Automated forest loss alerts, access to daily high-resolution imagery, and satellite imagery tasking allow our small expert team to conduct real-time monitoring that just a few years ago would have required costly, time-intensive, and even dangerous field operations with a high potential for direct conflict. Even then, most of these operations get to the forest after irreversible damage has already been done and the perpetrators have already fled, perpetuating a culture of impunity. Now, MAAP is able to track deforestation, identify illegal acts on the spot, and help halt illegal activity, making enforcement operations more timely and impactful.

Moving Beyond Monitoring To Ensure The Rule Of Law

We piloted our work in Peru in 2015, where we have become a trusted partner of the government by delivering the data needed to identify, understand, and react to illegal deforestation activities. By submitting these timely confidential reports (known as policy briefs) directly to the agencies with the authority to take action, we give them the highly-sensitive information and analysis – on vital issues like illegal mining, logging roads, and incursions into indigenous territories – that they can use to quickly stop further forest loss through law enforcement.

We have taken a major step beyond deploying technology to detect deforestation though, as we now work with the Peruvian government to develop their local and national level capacity and official system for monitoring and applying the law (called Sistema Nacional de Control y Vigilancia). And, most importantly, we work with local concessionaires to protect their productive forests and with indigenous communities to provide them with real-time data and capacity to track and report illegal actions across their ancestral lands. Due to the vastness of these areas, they would otherwise not be able to detect incursions in time and adequately protect their territories solely with foot patrols. The transformative benefit that MAAP offers is that it prevents deforestation and reduces conflicts – as well as potentially deadly confrontations – for these forest guardians.

To increase accountability for swift intervention, we keep the general public informed and provide the news media with breaking stories on deforestation and fires across all nine countries of the Amazon as they happen, through our freely available website maaproject.org. 

Linking Technology With Policy

Since Operation Mercury, MAAP has also provided nonpublic reports directly to the Peruvian government. With each cycle of reporting illegal activity, government crackdowns and further analysis, deforestation rates are slowing in the areas we study.

The cycle begins with technology. Satellites are our most powerful tool, and we use an array of satellites with different resolutions. To begin we spot a potential area of deforestation or investigate a deforestation alert using a lower resolution satellite. Then we prioritize the data, such as where the deforestation is, whether it is illegal or not, an

d other related factors. Once we have determined the significance of the deforestation, we further investigate the drivers with higher resolution satellite imagery.

This information is taken and compiled into reports, as shown in our Step 2: Reporting section of the cycle. We have two types of reports: public reports via our MAAP website, and private policy briefs for government agencies. Our public reports may be picked up by major news sources, which sometimes results in the public putting more pressure on authorities to address the deforestation.

Reporting leads to our last section of the circle, which is on action taken to stop the deforestation or policies created to reduce deforestation. Action can take the form of administrative action, an intervention of illegal activities, creating policy to better address forest crimes, or legal repercussions for offenders.

Going for a Wider and Deeper Impact

MAAP currently specializes in three types of real-time monitoring and tracking across the Amazon basin – deforestation, fires, and selective logging – and provides to authorities and local actors in Peru.

In order to achieve the scale and depth of coverage that governments and people need, we are extending  our work to provide data on some of the most urgent and impactful deforestation, degradation and climate issues of the day on a regional scale, expanding support for local governments to enact the rule of law, and continuing to evolve with the latest advances in technology that keep our efforts highly impactful and cost effective.

Extending our Reach Thematically and Across Borders