In 1965, as a result of a close association between NASA and CNAE – National Comission of Spacial Activities, a program for the increasing of research in the sphere of remote sensoring for survey of natural resources  started. In 1966, NASA suggested a program of cooperation, involving the aerial survey of selected areas that would be used as similar to the moon’s. The initial idea was then modified to a broad program of remote sensoring of natural resources. During one year, a group of work, coordinated by the CNAE and composed by members of 24 different governmental agencies, elaborated the policies to be adopted by the program. After a visit to the USA, sponsored by NASA and CNAE, realized in the middle    of

1967 by 12 people of the group, the training of the team began in 1968. During six months, a group of brazilian researchers was trained by NASA in the USA, and when they came back to Brazil, they trained other 40 people. From this common point, two different but complementary actions were developed by the brazilian government: the Project RADAM ( Radar in the Amazonia ) and the Program of Remote Sensoring by Satellite. The Project RADAM, created in 1970, by the Ministry of the Mines and Energy, was originally conceived to make the integrated survey of natural resources of an area of 1.500.000 km2, placed in the zone of influence of the Transamazonic highway, using the SLAR ( Side Looking Airborne Radar ). This instrument was selected among several existing remote sensors, for overcoming the difficulties of getting a homogeneous imaging and the physical impossibility of takes of good quality, because the incidence of clouds and intermittent pluviometric precipitation in the amazonic region presented themselves as restrictive factors to the acquisition of conventional aerial photographies. As the method and the quality of the answers became a success, the original RADAM area was extended to all the Legal Amazonia, in a first stage, till reaching the totality of the brazilian territory, in 1975, when it was called Project RADAMBRASIL, having become the greatest worldwide project of radargrametric covering made by airtransported radar. Starting from the interpretation of 551 semicontrolled mosaics of radar at the scale 1:250.000, an intense and useful mapping work was developed by a team, made up of 702 professionals, being 306 graduated and approximately 396 high school level. As a practical result, 38 volumes of the series “Survey of Natural Resources” were produced, 4 of them still unpublished, with their respective thematic maps at the scale 1:1.000.000 about geology, geomorphology ( relief ), pedology ( soils ), vegetation and potential land use. Besides the integrated mapping of natural resources of all the national territory, Previsional Metalogenetic and Hydric Resources Potential mappings of great part of the Northeast Region were elaborated. In the field of cartography, 275 planimetric charts were produced, covering an area of 4.300.210 km2 of the Legal Amazonia, besides 551 cartographic originals of all the national territory and 132 radar image chart of several regions, all of them at the scale 1:250.000. According to the Decree no. 91.295, of 31/05/85, both the data and the experts of the Project RADAMBRASIL were incorporated by the IBGE, where they keep on developing studies and researches on natural resources, environment and cartography.

Bibliography:

...1.  Ministério das Minas e Energia. Projeto RADAMBRASIL. Realizações. 1984, 82p.

...2.  Silva, D.  A.; Vasquez, G.A. – O Projeto SERE. Origem do Sensoriamento Remoto no Brasil. INPE, São José dos Campos, 1994, 17p.

Rio de Janeiro, May, 17th, 1999