The wells are normally hidden from view of those on the ISS, but they stand out in this photo due to reflected sunlight.
The image shows the Inambari River and several wells surrounded by deforested areas of muddy debris.
Independent gold mining supports tens of thousands of people in the Madre de Dios region, making it one of the largest unregistered mining industries in the world, according to NASA.
Mining is also the biggest driver of deforestation in the region, and the mercury used to extract gold pollutes waterways, the agency added.
Gold prospecting in the region has expanded since the inauguration of the Southern Interoceanic Highway in 2011 made the area more accessible.
The only road link between Brazil and Peru was intended to boost trade and tourism, but “deforestation could be the biggest result of the highway,” said NASA.
The photo, released publicly earlier this month, was taken on December 24.
Madre de Dios is an untouched part of the Amazon the size of South Carolina, where macaws and monkeys, jaguars and butterflies thrive. But while parts of Madre de Dios, such as the Tambopata National Reserve, are protected from mining, hundreds of square kilometers of rainforest in the area have been transformed into a toxic, tree-less desert.
Increases in the price of gold in recent years have created expanding cities in the jungle, complete with emerging brothels and shootings, as tens of thousands of people across Peru have joined the modern gold rush.
In January 2019, a scientific study found that gold mining deforestation destroyed about 22,930 acres of the Peruvian Amazon in 2018, according to the Monitoring Group for the Amazon Andean Project, known as MAAP. This is the highest annual total recorded since 1985, based on research conducted by the Amazon Scientific Innovation Center at Wake Forest University.
Deforestation in 2018 surpassed the previous record of 2017, when about 22,635 acres of forest were cleared by miners, according to the MAAP.
This means that, in two years, gold mining has decimated the equivalent of more than 34,000 football fields in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, according to the MAAP analysis.