The Amazon rainforest from the air

ByEd Yong
August 20, 2011
3 min read

An area of completely pristine forest. Every one of those dots is a tree crown, around 20-30m across. The scale is staggering. The trees continue past the horizon in every direction. This is completely undisturbed rainforest, as it should be.

I’ve just come back from a week in Peru, doing some reporting for a piece I’m writing for Wired UK. I’ll have more on that closer to the point of publication. For the moment, here are some photos of the Peruvian Amazon and nearby mountains, taken from the air.

I love the way the river splits and reforms.
It's around 20km long, and it's taken less than 5 years to make. It looks like a pustulent wound inflicted on the forest. Smoke billows from a patch where trees have recently been cut.
That ox-bow lake is what the water colour ought to be like. The sickly yellow colour of the main river comes from silt, sediment and run-offs from the many gold mines nearby.
Hills outside Cusco
Turquoise lake

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