One of the most mysterious places in the world will be the most highly surveyed, writes Alex Bellos
Cold War technology is being adapted to fight drug smugglers and illegal miners who are threatening the Amazon jungle.
A surveillance system (known by its Portuguese acronym, Sivam, and being set up by the Brazilian government) will make the three million square kilometres of rainforest, one of the world’s more inaccessible areas, into one of the best surveyed.
The tools are a multi-layered system of ground monitors, radars, jet planes, hot air balloons, satellites and computer networks. The photographs from satellites will be enhanced to the point where they can zoom in on objects just 1m long.
The need to monitor this area has become urgent because of the increasing destruction of the rainforest. Of the 517 000km2 felled since 1500, 80% has gone in the past three decades. And the Amazon has had many unwanted visitors – particularly wildcat miners, digging up land for gold and polluting it with mercury as they panned the earth.
Almost 90% of the rainforest is unblemished – an area roughly the size of Western Europe – and is barely inhabited apart from remote settlements and tribes. It is also badly monitored, making it easy to carry out clandestine activities like logging, mining and drugs trafficking.
There are an estimated 3 000 unidentified plane journeys in the Amazon every month – unidentified because more than two-thirds of the area is not covered by radar – and most are thought to be linked to illegal activities. Cocaine smuggling and processing has thrived in Brazil because no one is looking. Sivam will change that.
The contract for the project has gone to Raytheon, best known for developing the Cold War armoury of the United States and inventing the Patriot missile and the infrared search technology that guided missiles during the Gulf War in 1991.
Much of the Cold War technology has been released by the US government, and Raytheon is adapting it for its Amazonian adventure.
When Sivam is up and running in 2002 all of the Amazon will be covered by air traffic control radar. On the ground, 860 sites will be providing data that will eventually be processed in three local centres – one in Manaus, one in BelEm and one in Porto Velho. Every conceivable kind of data will be amassed – from the consistency of river water to the wind speed hundreds of metres up in the sky.
The weather-measuring equipment is divided into three types. Giant “radomes” – radars in the shape of domes and with a range of 320km – will be set up in 10 places.
Also on the ground, about 100 weather stations will measure atmospheric conditions like wind, humidity and temperature. At six other stations the information will be gathered by hot air balloons, measuring the same conditions at different altitudes.
The balloons will be joined in the air by eight customised aeroplanes overflying the area, using infra-red mapping tools to chart the terrain in more detail. In parts of the rainforest that are constantly covered in clouds, these planes will be used to find information that satellites cannot.
Once all the information is processed at the three regional centres, it will be passed to the main research centre in the capital, Brasilia.
“What makes this programme different,” says Raytheon’s president, Richard J Bartnik, “is the integration. It is the processing and development of the information. There will be a huge database.”
The airwaves too will be closely monitored. Low-frequency radio signals will be tracked to pick up illegal communications between drug traffickers
About 700 satellite dishes will be set up, providing remote areas with their first telephone and radio services. It will also provide some television and remote teaching facilities.
Sivam is not sending up any of its own satellites but upgrading Brazil’s technology that receives information from satellites like Landsat. The photographs will be digitised and, with new satellite technology being introduced in the next few years, resolution will improve from 20m to 1m. With better satellite images Brazil will be able to monitor more effectively the rate of deforestation.
Other effects of Sivam will be to protect Indian reservations, to prevent the spread of diseases, to enforce the law – especially in border areas where smuggling is common – and to control land occupation and use.
The implementation of Sivam has been a long and controversial affair. The idea was first hatched in 1990, and announced to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Raytheon won the bid two years later in a tight fight against the French company Thomson.
Allegations surfaced later that both companies were involved in paying off politicians. Many Brazilians are still twitchy about giving such a big project to a foreign firm, fearing that the US could use the information gathered for its own ends.
However, says Bartnik: “One of the big issues is the question of sovereignty. But the only people who have access to the data are Brazilians. We are installing it, making sure it works, then handing it over.”