The flights covered 4,497 square kilometres in 2024, and on already deforested ground along the same lines the laser picked up five times as many structures as the team’s own satellite work had found along those lines.
Canopy-penetrating laser scans along 4,430 kilometres of flight lines over Acre and Amazonas found 432 earthworks where only 36 had been recorded, and the survey’s authors now propose that 24,000 to 30,000 lie across southwest Amazonia
Science Blog Editorial Team