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The Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) produces official information about deforestation as well as land use and cover in the country, based on remote sensing images. The current open data policy adopted by many space agencies and governments worldwide provided access to petabytes of remote sensing images. To properly deal with this vast amount of images, novel technologies have been proposed and developed based on cloud computing and big data systems. This paper describes the INPE's initiatives in using remote sensing images and cloud services of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure to improve land use and cover monitoring.

Monitoring the conversion of native vegetation has challenged Brazilian government and scientists since the 1980s. In the case of the Amazonian forests, the Amazon Gross Deforestation Monitoring Project - PRODES has developed an effective methodology that provides consistent annual data on deforestation areas on a scale of 1:250,000, since 1988. In this article, we present some aspects of the evolution of this methodology, the key processes to produce accurate deforestation maps during the last 30 years and the new challenges that the Project would face. A central lesson is that no computational technique has, to date, been able to achieve the quality of deforestation maps produced by visual interpretation of satellite images and manual mapping.

Monitoring the conversion of native vegetation has challenged Brazilian government and scientists since the 1980s. In the case of the Amazonian forests, the Amazon Gross Deforestation Monitoring Project - PRODES has developed an effective methodology that provides consistent annual data on deforestation areas on a scale of 1:250,000, since 1988. In this article, we present some aspects of the evolution of this methodology, the key processes to produce accurate deforestation maps during the last 30 years and the new challenges that the Project would face. A central lesson is that no computational technique has, to date, been able to achieve the quality of deforestation maps produced by visual interpretation of satellite images and manual mapping.