ABSTRACT
The importance of the Amazon region as a bio-ecological diversity and ecosystem services reservoir and for climate change, fighting is worldwide recognized. Moreover, Amazon hosts invaluable cultural diversity composed of indigenous people and their traditional production systems, practices, and ecological knowledge. The Amazon is also a territory rapidly changing, where forest, (agro)forestry ecosystems, and indigenous land rights are under continuous endogenous and exogenous threats and pressures. To investigate and monitor this remote hardly-accessible area, contrast climate change and support human rights, the use of earth observation, satellite imageries, remote sensing (RS) tools and techniques could be very effective, in particular in combination with fieldwork activities, spatial and census data, among others. In this chapter, we briefly explore the basis of remote sensing, the available satellite sensors and data, the techniques and indexes used in forestry and agriculture, the available tools and platforms to explore and use RS data, and the last paragraph will conclude with an overview of peer review case studies concerning the use of satellite and RS in the investigation of Amazon and indigenous territories.
