. INTRODUCTION
The National Institute for Space Research – INPE/Brazil, has done several research and application studieswith 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.