{"id":50836,"date":"2025-12-15T04:04:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T10:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nelson.wisc.edu\/the-commons\/?p=50836"},"modified":"2026-03-13T15:16:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:16:47","slug":"amintas-brandao-every-pixel-tells-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nelson.wisc.edu\/the-commons\/amintas-brandao-every-pixel-tells-a-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Pixel Tells a Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amintas Brand\u00e3o Jr. started mapping roads in the Amazon as an intern. It was 2003, and he was working at Imazon, a Brazilian nonprofit focused on conservation and sustainable development in the Amazon. For four to five hours a day, every day, he would click. Image by image, pixel by pixel, he helped shape one of the very first maps of unofficial roads in the Brazilian Amazon region \u2014 one that included every road not shown on the official maps and covered an area of approximately 1.93 million square miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the available technology, it took nearly one year to accurately map the whole Amazon. But then came Google Earth, then cloud computing, and now, artificial intelligence. \u201cOne year pretty much was reduced to one week of work,\u201d says Brand\u00e3o. As Brand\u00e3o\u2019s career as a researcher in land-change science has grown, it\u2019s done so the largest developments in conservation technology since satellites were introduced. But the crux, he argues, is the same. \u201cEvery pixel tells a story,\u201d he says. You just have to make the connection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brand\u00e3o Jr. gave a talk at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, about his research in the Amazon. Photo courtesy of Amintas Brand\u00e3o Jr.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Brand\u00e3o\u2019s connection to the Amazon is simple: he grew up there. \u201cI\u2019m from the heart of the Amazon,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the Amazon, I saw all the problems of paving of roads in my childhood.\u201d He wanted to understand the systems and processes behind these land-use changes. While earning a bachelor\u2019s in environmental engineering, he focused in on how technology can offer solutions to the Amazon\u2019s environmental problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n