ESA presents a fascinating image that looks like a painting.
But it's a Copernicus Sentinel-2 image that features an area in the Santa Cruz Department of Bolivia, where part of the tropical dry forest has been cleared for agricultural use. The region has been transformed from dense forest into a patterned expanse of agricultural land. This deforestation method, common in this part of Bolivia, is characterised by the radial patterns that can be seen clearly in the image.
Each patterned field is approximately 20 sq km and each side is around 2.5 km long. Small settlements can be seen in the centre of each individual field in the image, which typically contain a church, a school and a soccer field. These communities are joined by a road network depicted by the straight lines that bisect the radial fields and connect the adjacent areas.
