First Brazilian-made satellite watches the Amazon

doi:10.1126/science.371.6533.975

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.371.6533.975
	First Brazilian-made satellite watches the Amazon
	Sofia Moutinho
	2021-03-05
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	Brazil's first entirely home-built satellite has joined the fleet of spacecraft monitoring threats to the country's tropical rainforest, the world's largest. With the 28 February launch of Amazonia-1 from a base in India, Brazil now ranks with more than 20 other countries that have managed satellite design, production, and operation. The satellite enables near-daily updates on Amazonian deforestation. But researchers face an unsupportive government that has repeatedly cut budgets for Amazon monitoring and rejected unwelcome findings. A 2.5-meter-long metallic cuboid, Amazonia-1 carries three wide-angle cameras that can detect any area of deforestation bigger than four soccer fields. Its development, begun in 2008, involved more than a dozen Brazilian companies and an investment of 360 million reais ($60 million)—about one-sixth the cost to import ready-to-use equipment, says Adenilson Silva, an engineer at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) who led the project. Funding and supply shortages postponed the original launch, slated for 2018. With Amazonia-1, INPE aims to leave behind a disastrous history. In 2003, a satellite exploded during launch from the Brazilian base in Alcântara, killing 21 people. The base hasn't launched a satellite since. It's now operational again, but it's not equipped for craft as big as Amazonia-1, which ranks as a midweight satellite at 640 kilograms. Now in orbit 752 kilometers above Earth, Amazonia-1 will spend 6 months in tests of its data transmission, sensors and solar panels, and other systems. Its images, sent to INPE's processing center in Campinas, Brazil, will be freely available to researchers. They'll be integrated into the country's Amazon monitoring programs later this year. Amazonia-1 will track a rainforest in crisis because of record-breaking clear-cutting and burning, mostly for agriculture and cattle farming. INPE reports 20% of areas officially designated as protected have already been destroyed. Combining data from Amazonia-1 and existing satellites offers a more accurate picture of burned areas and crop and pasture productivity, says landscape ecologist Marcia Macedo of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “We can now create composite data sets that address new research questions,” she says. Until now, Brazil's Amazon monitoring program has relied primarily on the U.S. satellite Landsat, which provides high-definition images every 16 days, and on two satellites codeveloped by Brazil and China, CBERS-4 and CBERS-4A, which together provide images every 3 to 4 days. Amazonia-1's cameras, which capture an 850-kilometer-wide strip of Earth at 65-meter resolution, are no sharper than those on the existing satellites. But its addition to the fleet shortens the gap between flyovers to generate new images every day or two. That increases the chances of getting clear pictures without cloud cover and gives authorities faster alerts about new deforestation. “A day can make all the difference,” says Cláudio Almeida, who coordinates INPE's Amazonian monitoring program. Near–real-time alerts mean that “enforcement teams can go to the right place at the right time.” INPE plans to build two more Amazon-monitoring satellites with the infrastructure developed for Amazonia-1. The fleet will give the country technological autonomy it has long desired, Almeida says. He recalls a problem with Landsat in 2012 that forced INPE to buy satellite data with poorer image quality from the U.K. government. Yet lack of support from the Brazilian government may limit INPE's ability to process a new surge of data, says environmental modeling expert Britaldo Soares Filho of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. “It is not enough to invest in technology without investing in research and people,” he says. INPE's budget and staff have been cut repeatedly since 2019, when President Jair Bolsonaro denied the agency's alarming data on deforestation and ousted its director, physicist Ricardo Galvão. Brazil's proposed 2021 budget includes a new 15% cut to INPE that has already prompted the cancellation of 100 fellowships, which supported nearly one-quarter of the agency's technical staff. Amazonia-1's launch was at risk after seven researchers lost their grants. They were temporarily reinstated with Brazilian Space Agency funds. The Brazilian Ministry of Defense has meanwhile invested in a parallel remote sensing strategy, allocating 145 million reais in June 2020 for an undisclosed satellite imaging system for Amazon monitoring. The move undermines INPE's goal of relying on its own satellite infrastructure, Galvão says. But his bigger worry is that new evidence of deforestation will be met with inaction. “I am sure INPE's scientists will provide the data without bowing to any pressure,” he says, “but I have doubts that the current government will value this data.”
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
URL	查看原文
引用统计
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/316975
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Sofia Moutinho. First Brazilian-made satellite watches the Amazon[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Sofia Moutinho.(2021).First Brazilian-made satellite watches the Amazon.Science.
MLA	Sofia Moutinho."First Brazilian-made satellite watches the Amazon".Science (2021).