Trecking down the Amazon on your computer thanks to Google.

Google has teamed up with Amazon for a new project. Well, not Amazon, as in the company that sells the Kindle. No, we’re talking about the great, untamed wilderness of the Amazon rainforest. In a partnership with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation, Google aims to use its Street View technology to raise awareness of the world’s largest rainforest and its important ecosystems.

To do this, Google is mapping the byways of the Amazon River…

Local residents will pedal Google’s camera-equipped trikes across the few roads in the area as well, offering a peek of the different communities and the area’s inhabitants that live in isolated villages along the riverfront, most of which we’ll never see. Thousands of indigenous people call this region home. The Sustainable Amazon Foundation promotes social, economic, and environmental awareness of the Brazilian sate of Amazonas.

Street View in the Amazon team leader Karin Tuxen-Bettman said in a statement that once all the images are uploaded to the Internet, the local culture and beauty of the Amazon will be available to anyone, anywhere in the world. Soon, anyone with a computer and Internet access will be able to explore the Amazon without having to get all the necessary malaria vaccines in advance.

It looks like Google traded the icy tundra of Antarctica for the warm rainforest of the Amazon. Last year Google ventured to Antarctica to capture the physical beauties, as well as the adorable penguins that inhabit the continent.

via TreeHugger