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This article analyses DMSP/OLS night‐time imagery as an information source to detect human settlements and to estimate the urban population in the Amazon region. DMSP/OLS single orbits were used to generate a DMSP stable light mosaic for 2002, in which most of the urban settlements with a population higher than 5000 inhabitants were precisely identified. DMSP/OLS night‐time mosaic images from 1995, 1999 and 2002 were integrated with the IBGE census data and the correlation between DMSP/OLS night‐time light area and the urban population was compared. Coefficients of determination higher than 0.8 were obtained from the linear regression between DMSP/OLS night‐time lights and urban population census data. Although the fieldwork showed that DMSP image data could only record urbanized settlements with more than 2.5 km² of well‐lit surface areas, the initial and final extension of the night …