The pits are usually hidden from view in the ISS, but stand out in this feature due to the reflected sunlight.
The image shows the Inambari River and a series of pits surrounded by deforested areas of muddy loot.
Independent gold mining supports tens of thousands of people in the Madre de Dios region, making it one of the largest unregistered mining industries in the world, according to NASA.
Mining is also the region’s main deforestation engine and the mercury used to extract gold contaminates waterways, the agency added.
Gold prospecting in the region has expanded since the inauguration of the South Interoceanic Highway in 2011 made the area more accessible.
The only road connection between Brazil and Peru was intended to boost trade and tourism, but “deforestation may be the biggest result of the highway,” NASA said.
The photo, released earlier this month, was taken on December 24th.
Madre de Dios is an immaculate piece of the Amazon the size of South Carolina, where macaws and monkeys, jaguars and butterflies thrive. But while some areas of Madre de Dios, such as the Tambopata National Reserve, are protected from mining, hundreds of square miles of rainforest in the area have become a toxic treeless wasteland.
Rising gold prices in recent years have created cities booming in the jungle, with emerging brothels and gun struggles as tens of thousands of people from all over Peru joined the fever of the or modern.
In January 2019, a scientific study found that deforestation of gold mining destroyed approximately 22,930 acres of Peruvian Amazons in 2018, according to the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project group, known as MAAP. This is the highest annual total recorded in 1985, based on research conducted by the Amazon Scientific Innovation Center at Wake Forest University.
Deforestation in 2018 eclipsed the previous record high of 2017, when an estimated 22,635 acres of forest were cut down by gold miners, according to the MAAP.
This means that for two years, gold mining decimated the equivalent of more than 34,000 football fields in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, according to MAAP analysis.