Time machine · Brazil · 1984 to 2025

Carajás, the iron mountains of the Amazon, 1984 to 2025

The first picture is from May 1984, the year Serra Norte began: a new road, an airstrip, a planned town and the first benches cut into a forest-covered plateau. Slide forward and the red ground of the iron mines spreads along the ridge, pit after pit, while the forest around them stays standing.

Serra Norte (N4, N5)

5 km

2025Sentinel-2C · 28 Jul 2025

Worked ground Iron ore output

Ground worked by the mine by this yearNewly worked since the frame beforeMilestones on the timeline

Forty years, frame by frame

One clear picture every five years, all on one grid, 30 km across. Pick a frame to open the viewer on it, drag the timeline, or press Play. Compare puts any two years side by side under a divider you drag.

1985 · 31 May 1984
Landsat 5 · 0.0 km² worked

1990 · 22 Jul 1991
Landsat 5 · 8.6 km² worked

1995 · 3 Jul 1996
Landsat 5 · 11.8 km² worked

2000 · 1 Jul 2001
Landsat 5 · 16.5 km² worked

2005 · 28 Jul 2005
Landsat 5 · 20.6 km² worked

2010 · 29 Jul 2011
Landsat 5 · 27.1 km² worked

2015 · 26 Jul 2016
Landsat 8 · 32.7 km² worked

2020 · 19 Jul 2020
Sentinel-2B · 36.7 km² worked

2025 · 28 Jul 2025
Sentinel-2C · 39.7 km² worked

What happened here

1922 First surveys. Geological surveys in the Carajás region began in 1922. [1]
1967 US Steel explores. US Steel began exploring the Carajás ranges in July 1967. [1]
1984 Serra Norte opens. Mining at Serra Norte began in 1984. The first frame here is from May that year. [1]
2016 S11D, to the south. Vale's S11D mine in Serra Sul, south-west of this picture, began in 2016. [1]
2025 78 Mt from Serra Norte. Vale reports 78.1 Mt of iron ore from Serra Norte in 2025, down from 91.3 Mt in 2023, and 86.0 Mt from Serra Sul. [1]

More on the mine's history is on Carajás in the history of mining, and on the iron ore page and mining in Brazil.

Iron ore output by year

Iron ore output from Carajás in the years with an open, mine-level figure: the Jasansky et al. open database of mine production (CC BY 4.0) and the operators' own filings. Years with no open mine-level figure are left out rather than estimated. The timeline under the pictures shows the same bars.

The figures

Year	Output	Basis	Source
2023	91.3 Mt	iron ore, Serra Norte	[1]
2024	87.6 Mt	iron ore, Serra Norte	[1]
2025	78.1 Mt	iron ore, Serra Norte	[1]

How this was made

Pictures. Landsat 4 and 5 (to 2011), Landsat 7 (before its 2003 scan-line fault), Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 (2017 on), surface reflectance read from Microsoft's Planetary Computer. For each frame we take the clearest picture within a year or so of the target year, in the same season where we can, checked against each scene's own cloud mask, and cut it to one grid. One colour stretch serves every frame, and each older frame is colour-matched to the newest over the whole picture, so a change in colour is mostly a change on the ground. Landsat pixels are 30 m and Sentinel-2 pixels 10 m, so the newest frames are sharper. The date of each picture shows under the year.

Worked ground is our own estimate from the pictures. Within a box drawn round the mine, leaving the towns out, a 30 m cell counts as worked once it has lost its vegetation or changed strongly in brightness and short-wave infrared against the first frame, and the next frame sees the same change. Ground stays worked once it is worked, small specks are dropped, and holes inside the footprint are filled. It traces pits, waste dumps, tailings and plant, but it can miss ground that looks like its surroundings and catch a road or a cleared paddock. Treat the areas as a guide, not a survey. Worked ground here is mostly forest cleared for pits and dumps. The pale grey patches there from the start are natural clearings on the ironstone ridges, and are not counted.

Output and milestones. Each figure and fact is linked to its source below. We report what operators and governments published and do not estimate missing years.

Sources and credits

Vale S.A. (SEC): Form 20-F for the year ended 31 December 2025

Satellite pictures: USGS/NASA Landsat (public domain) and contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-2 data 2025, via Microsoft Planetary Computer, processed by Prospector Trails. Not investment advice.