Satellites Spot Hidden Villages In Amazon

sciencehabit writes The Amazon is home to perhaps dozens of isolated tribes who make their living far off the grid from the wider society, growing crops and hunting and gathering in the forest. These reclusive peoples are threatened by drug running, illegal logging, and highway construction, even if they dwell in 'protected' reserves in Peru or Brazil; one group, apparently pushed out of its lands, made contact this summer. Now, researchers have a new way of examining their fate without disruptive and frightening flyovers by aircraft. Researchers use high-resolution WorldView or GeoEye satellite images to monitor demographic changes in isolated Amazon tribes. The scientists got location and population estimates for five isolated villages along the Brazil-Peru border from Brazilian government reports and other sources. Then they examined 50-centimeter resolution satellite images taken in 2006, 2012, and 2013 and could spot the peoples' horticultural fields and characteristic pattern of either longhouses or clusters of small houses; these villages could be clearly differentiated from the transient camps of illegal loggers or drug runners.

Comments

How far off the grid do you have to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

If even these people can't have any privacy then we're all really screwed.

leave them alone

[NotQuiteReal]

OK, we found this group of people... moving on.

Chalk it up for +1 diversity, but for God's sake, don't try to visit them and sneeze in there general direction.

If they were unhappy, they would have walked in one direction long enough to "discover" others. Leave them be.