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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.
There was a really good TV show (fiction) called Amazon that ran around 2000 or so, but lasted only one season unfortunately. It dealt with some of these issues. It's available on DVD, but unfortunately it ends with a cliffhanger that was never resolved. Really awesome show though. Kind of like Lost, which came years later, only much better in my opinion.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
If even these people can't have any privacy then we're all really screwed.
The Sentinelese People of the Andaman Islands have figured out how to keep their privacy: kill anyone who comes within the range of their arrows. Other, less belligerent, tribes in the Andaman Islands have made contact with outsiders, and suffered near extermination from introduced diseases. So the Sentinelese privacy policy seems to be working well for them.