Instead of rising out of a city skyline, South America’s tallest tower stands alone
among the trees.
The € 8. 4 million Amazon Tall Tower Observatory, stretching 325 meters ( 1,066
feet) into the sky, was built to monitor the relationship between the atmosphere and
the Amazon rain forest’s tropical ecosystem.
The tower’s remote location, 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the nearest city, was
a blessing and a curse for the project team. Free from pollution and human influence,
the team was able to build a system that will collect the most accurate data.
But the isolated site also presented construction challenges. The distance and
often-unpaved roads caused logistical problems for the trucks and rafts carrying the
tower’s steel structure. To help reduce time lost in transit, the project team camped
at the construction site in three-week shifts.
Construction on the tower’s foundation started in August 2014 and closed January
2015. A joint effort between Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research and
Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, the tower is scheduled to start gathering data in the jungle this month.
PROJECT: Amazon Tall Tower Observatory
LOCATION: 150 kilometers (93 miles)
from Manaus, Brazil
HEIGHT: 325 meters ( 1,066 feet)
that is able to analyze the health of [a] tropical
ecosystem as important as the Amazonian forest.”
—Paulo Artaxo, project coordinator, University of São Paulo, to Popular Mechanics
“It is the first long-term tropical observatory