A Sentinel-1 SAR imagery dataset for airstrips detection and segmentation in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest

TL;DR

This paper introduces a SAR imagery dataset for detecting and tracking unauthorized airstrips in the Amazon Rainforest, aiding environmental monitoring.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a SAR-based dataset specifically for airstrip detection and change detection in the Amazon, leveraging Sentinel-1 imagery.

Findings

The dataset includes Sentinel-1 images from 2014–2024 covering 1040 airstrips in the Amazon.

It supports object detection, semantic segmentation, and change detection tasks for machine learning models.

Geospatial files are provided to enable GIS integration and visualization.

Abstract

The Brazilian Amazon Rainforest holds a large ecological and economic importance and is considered one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. The region faces numerous challenges from illegal human activities that threaten its sustainability and well-being, which are often supported by the construction of unauthorized airstrips. Additionally, due to its persistent cloud cover, which often hinders monitoring with optical satellites, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery provides a crucial alternative for the region surveillance. Thus, this dataset was developed to support the training and evaluation of machine learning techniques, including deep learning models for detecting and segmenting airstrips in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest using SAR imagery. The dataset comprises images from the Sentinel-1 satellite, acquired primarily between 2021 and 2024, covering 1040 locations of known airstrips sourced from the MapBiomas project (published in 2023, based on 2021 reference data). For the change detection task, historical “before” images were selected from the period between 2014 and 2021 to capture the pre-construction state. The data is structured to support three distinct machine learning tasks: object detection (e.g., YOLOv8), semantic segmentation (e.g., U-Net), and change detection. For each task, specific images and annotations are provided. Additionally, geospatial files (Shapefile, GeoPackage) are included to facilitate the integration and visualization of the dataset in a GIS environment. The data is valuable for researchers in remote sensing, computer vision, environmental monitoring, security and defense, enabling the development of automated systems to monitor irregular activities in remote forest regions. The dataset is available at a Mendeley Data repository: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/x7rn78ymtn/1

Figures