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27/11/2010
Guyana: new SPOT satellite image
Discover a special satellite image that will help you improve your understanding of the Guyana territory, particularly its tropical forest - with Géoportail.
Guyana is both a region and a department of France, located in the equatorial zone. It covers 84 000 km², the equivalent of 15 departments in metropolitan France.
The SPOT satellite image
It is difficult to take aerial photographs of Guyana from an aircraft because there is almost permanent cloud cover: satellite images therefore offer a good alternative.
IGN processes a mosaic of only slightly cloudy SPOT satellite images so as to obtain an image with as few clouds as possible.
The satellite images were taken in 2007 and 2008, and processed in 2009.
> See the images on Géoportail
The Guyanese forest: an important ecological issue
96% of Guyana is covered by around 20 million acres of tropical rain forest.
The satellite view of Guyana recently made available on Géoportail makes it possible to see current land use and estimate the area that has been cleared.
Tropical rain forests are veritable ‘carbon wells’: by absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, they help to reduce the amount of CO2 it contains and thus serve to fight global warming.
The Guyanese forest is one of the richest with respect to biodiversity: over 8,000 plants. 1,500 varieties of trees, and 300,000 species of insect, make the Guyanese forest a truly exceptional area for conservation.
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2010, International Year of Biodiversity