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Sunday, November 3, 2013

This Map Shows How Gold Mining Is Destroying The Amazon Rainforest

After the global financial crisis in 2008, an increased demand for gold lead to a massive increase in mining in the area. The majority of the gold mining is illegal but because it is small-scale and done in secret, it has been  difficult for the Peruvian government to police.  
Greg Asner, a professor at Stanford’s Carnegie Department of Global Ecology, has been developing a software called ClASlite that detects deforestation by analyzing satellite and aerial imagery. Asner has been working with the Peruvian government, developing a special version of the software calibrated to detect gold mines. What the software has found is striking.

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