Maps & America: The Arthur Holzheimer Lecture Series

Mapping Brazil from Within: Remote Sensing, Collaboration, and Counter-Cartographic Perspectives

Maps & America: The Arthur Holzheimer Lecture Series returns on April 30 with speaker Dr. Julio Pedrassoli – associate professor at the University of São Paulo – for his presentation “Mapping Brazil from Within: Remote Sensing, Collaboration, and Counter-Cartographic Perspectives.” The event will open with a reception at 5:30 p.m., and the lecture will begin at 6 p.m.

Pedrassoli will discuss his work leading urban mapping with MapBiomas, a Brazilian-founded initiative that uses cloud computing, machine learning, and decades of satellite imagery to produce large‑scale maps displaying changes in environmental variables over time. Pedrassoli will also analyze the societal impacts of organizing mapping through a collaborative network of academics, NGOs, tech companies, and civil society. By considering maps that challenge dominant power structures, the lecture examines how such an arrangement shapes data transparency, methodological openness, and the public circulation of territorial information, particularly in deforestation, land-use change, climate governance, and land conflicts. The Brazilian experience is situated as a reference model that has been replicated across South America and the tropical world as a source of innovation in cartography.

Pedrassoli is a remote sensing scientist and geographer with a PhD in Human Geography from the University of São Paulo. His research focuses on mapping urban expansion and housing–poverty dynamics in the Global South. A former research scholar at Columbia University, he develops advanced methods for mapping informal settlements.

Held annually in the spring, the Maps & America Lecture Series was inaugurated by noted cartographic historian, Brian Harley, in 1990. Since its inception, the lecture series has been generously sponsored by the late Arthur Holzheimer and his wife Janet Holzheimer of the Chicago area. Over the years, the series has featured many leading figures in the field of map history and provided a multifaceted survey of this rapidly developing field. The lecture series is free and open to the public. To learn more, view the list of previous Maps & America lectures.

Those who plan on attending in person should register for the Maps & America 2026 lecture. To attend the lecture virtually, sign up to receive a Zoom link.