The Amazônia and the global climate

The Amazonia, the largest river basin of the world covered mostly with natural rainforest, is a fast changing environment. Only during the dry season of 1987, 20 million hectares of land were burnt of which 40% were estimated to be natural forests. Changing the land use from forests to other types, such pasture or agricultural fields, may interfere with the global climate besides altering drastically the local environment. First, because the Amazônia is an important heat source for the general circulation of the atmosphere and second because the forest plays significant role in the chemical composition of the atmosphere and in the greenhouse effect. This paper attempts to demonstrate this fact using the evidence available presently

Effect of the atmosphere on the classification of LANDSAT data

The author has identified the following significant results. In conjunction with Turner's model for the correction of satellite data for atmospheric interference, the LOWTRAN-3 computer was used to calculate the atmospheric interference. Use of the program improved the contrast between different natural targets in the MSS LANDSAT data of Brasilia, Brazil. The classification accuracy of sugar canes was improved by about 9% in the multispectral data of Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paulo

Amazonian evaporation.

Medições de evaporação da cobertura vegetal seca e perdas por intercepção obtidas durante um estudo de dois anos de evaporação na floresta tropical no centro da Amazônia são utilizados para calibrar um modelo micrometeorológico de evaporação