elicopter.
ints in
point per
st by means
Without doubt, the Amazonian field work was a stage of
Project RADAMBRASIL most arduous to fulfill, and, considering the realities
of the region, was usually extremely inhospitable. A measure of this
adversity is in the number of mortalities by disease and other accidents
which totalled more than twenty. With respect to costs, the radarmetric
MOST VT the entire national territory came to approximately US $ 3.50/
km”.
calculate, owing to a lack of information of costs associated with field
The total costs per km? of areas already inventoried is difficult to
missions which had considerable support from the Brazilian Air Force.Those
estimates made are in the area of US$ 15.00 /km? . It must be taken into
account that the Amazon field work was extremely expensive which would not
be the case for the rest of the country.
Inumerous immediate results were obtained in the Amazon by
RADAMBRASIL. Some relevant examples of newly discovered mineral resources
include: a manganese deposit in Rondonia estimated to contain 500,000 tons
of mineral ore; gold deposits in Tapajos River region and in the Amapa
Territory, phospate in the south of Para State; cassiterite at various
locations and various volcanic structures rich in rare minerals. From the
point of view of geomorphology, a new map of Amazonia has been completed
which reveals that flat land surfaces are a fifth the extent of which
they were previously attributed. It was verified that hydroelectric
potential in the Amazon is much greater than it was considered to be up to
now. With respect to soils, various areas (generally fluvial) bearing
extremely fertile soil deposits were discovered.
Project RADAMBRASIL, without question, is a decisive step
to augment, by degree, the knowledge of the country's natural resources,
and, in principal part, the Amazon region which was largely unknown. What
was undertaken, was one of the largest projects ever executed to systemati
cally map natural resources over a considerable terrestrial area of the
globe. An important aspect of Project RADAMBRASIL is that it must be
considered an inventory at cursory level, aimed primarily as a point of
departure from the extropective view to inventories with considerably
more details.