1. INTRODUCTION
The National Institute for Space Research – INPE/Brazil, has
done several research and application studies with remote
sensing data in the forestry area. Among the most important
studies one can mention the project “Monitoring of the
Brazilian Amazonian Forest by Satellite” (PRODES), an
estimation of the extent and rate of deforestation using TM
Landsat 5 images. More recently, due to the degradation of the
TM-Landsat 5 signal and the non-availability of TM-Landsat 7
data, other sensors have been used to get subsidies needed by
the Brazilian Government to control and monitor the Amazon
environment.