deforestation in the Amazon. An interesting part of the story starts at

the river a long ways to the north actually. If we zoom in here along the Amazon way up

here in what looks like virgin forest still -- and a lot of it is --

you can see a road that leads from the Amazon here

and along through more or less untouched rainforest for hundreds and hundreds of

miles. And as you get south far enough you start

to see clearing along the road where farmers are starting to clear the

forests and farm.

The road facilitates the farming, the road facilitates the population

coming out there. And then all along that road the land is cleared

and when there isn't any land next to the road another road is cut,

often in another direction and people start clearing that.

And progressively you get this fishbone pattern that expands and expands and grows together

into things that look more like this. And the forest is just a handful of little

scraps anymore that are scattered throughout

between farm fields where it's either a low spot that swept

or for some other reason isn't ideal to farm.

Amazon basin deforestation is along an arc and the states of Rondonia, Mato Grosso, and

Para and from 1999 to 2012

it's quite striking. This whole area here in Eastern Para state

if you go back to 1999 the vast majority of it is

intact forest and you can just see the herringbone roads come out through the

forest and then roads come out from those and the land

clearing and the forest disappearing.

And it's made all the more obvious with these two protected areas here

which don't disappear... makes it really quite compelling to see.

As you look at this, these are... a lot of people called Amazon the lungs of the

world. It's a little bit at a time when you're on

the ground and you clear an area for soybeans and you can feed some people.

But when you look at it in the bigger picture again as Landsat allows you to do

you can see that it's not something we can do forever.