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Mapazonia is an independent, community-run educational project. We collect and explain, in plain language, everything a newcomer needs to start contributing to open maps of the Amazon region.
The name carries forward an idea that volunteers first put into practice years ago: that the Amazon basin deserves a detailed, free and openly licensed map, and that the most realistic way to build one is collaboratively. Rather than wait for a commercial company to survey thousands of kilometres of forest and floodplain, mappers decided to do it themselves — tracing rivers, roads and settlements from satellite imagery and sharing every edit under an open licence.
What we do
This site is a guide, not a mapping platform. We don't host the map data ourselves and we don't run the editing tools. Instead we point people toward OpenStreetMap and the open tools around it, and we explain the techniques that make Amazon mapping effective: how to read tricky tropical imagery, how to trace a meandering river accurately, how to tag a road that only exists in the dry season, and how to take part in organised mapping tasks.
What we believe
- Maps are infrastructure. A good map is a public good. When it's missing, the people who suffer most are those already hardest to reach.
- Open beats closed. Data that anyone can inspect, correct and reuse is more trustworthy and more durable than data locked inside a single company.
- Local knowledge wins. Remote tracing gets you a long way, but the best maps come from pairing distant volunteers with residents who know the ground.
- Small contributions add up. Most of OpenStreetMap was built by people giving a few minutes here and there. The Amazon will be no different.
How the work is organised
Most large mapping efforts use a tasking manager — a tool that splits a region into a grid and lets volunteers claim squares one at a time. Over the years, community projects have used this approach to map water reservoirs during drought in northern Colombia, to chart flood-exposed neighbourhoods along Costa Rican rivers, and to assess building damage after tropical cyclones in the Pacific. The same method applies anywhere: divide, trace, review, repeat.
Want to reach us? Visit the contact page.