To commemorate World Forest Day, Google Street View has brought forth a virtual representation of the Amazon forest for scientists, researchers and online explorers alike. So for those who always wanted to take a boat ride down the Rio Negro Reserve or hike along a forest trail, they can be all done through this offering.
According to the official Google blog, approximately 50,000 images have been stitched together in order to derive these 360-degree panoramic views of the rainforest. The team sent by the Mountain View search giant deployed a Street View trike and a tripod camera complete with a fisheye lens to snap up pictures of the local communities and landscapes, for audiences across the globe.
Street View preview of the Amazon:
“Last August, a few members of our Brazil and U.S. Street View and Google Earth Outreach teams were invited to the Amazon Basin to collect ground-level images of the rivers, forest and communities in the Rio Negro Reserve. Today, on World Forest Day, we’re making those images available through the Street View feature on Google Maps. Now anyone can experience the beauty and diversity of the Amazon,” shares Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Project Lead for Google Street View in the Amazon via the company’s blog.
Users can also take a stroll across the region to dabble in the culture of the Tumbira communities, which happens to be the largest in the Rio Negro Reserve. A number of areas in the Amazon are apparently restricted to the public, so this may well be a convenient way for explorers to peek at what the rainforest has in its offerings.
The Google Street View Amazon project was carried out in partnership with a local nonprofit organization, the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation.