How the University of São Paulo is transforming how researchers access greenhouse gas data for the Amazon rainforest with AWS

This article describes how the University of São Paulo created Digital Amazon, an AWS-powered platform that unifies greenhouse gas and environmental data for Amazon rainforest research.

• Integrates 17 AWS services to manage 7 terabytes of environmental data from satellites, ground towers, and drones
• Reduced data preparation time from 1 week to 1 hour, enabling 40x faster research iteration
• Implements seven-tier permission model using IAM and Lake Formation for secure global collaboration
• Provides role-appropriate access: raw datasets for scientists, curated visualizations for policymakers, simplified views for public
• Enables drone monitoring at 20-millisecond latency and one-fifth previous costs for greenhouse gas collection
• Expanding to Cerrado savanna, Atlantic Forest, and urban environments with AI-powered semantic search via Amazon Bedrock

Digital Amazon demonstrates how cloud infrastructure democratizes access to critical climate data, accelerating research and enabling cross-institutional collaboration for environmental science.