- Deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest is on track to rival last year’s 15-year-high according to data released today by the Brazilian government.
- INPE, Brazil’s national space research institute, today published figures from its DETER deforestation alert system, which tracks forest clearing on a near-real time basis. INPE’s system detected 8,590 square kilometers of deforestation between August 1, 2021 and July 31, 2022, 2.3% lower than the previous year, when deforestation hit the highest level since 2006.
- The area of forest affected by degradation and selected cutting, which is typically a precursor to outright deforestation, climbed 15.6% year over year.
- 2022’s tally represents an area nearly the size of Puerto Rico or Cypress. But the actual area of forest loss over the past 12 months is significantly higher: INPE is expected to release its findings from analysis of high resolution satellite imagery in October or November.
Deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest is on track to rival last year’s 15-year-high according to data released today by the Brazilian government.
INPE, Brazil’s national space research institute, today published figures from its DETER deforestation alert system, which tracks forest clearing on a near-real time basis to support enforcement action against illegal deforestation. INPE’s system detected 8,590 square kilometers of deforestation between August 1, 2021 and July 31, 2022, 2.3% less than the previous year, when deforestation hit the highest level since 2006.
The area of forest affected by degradation and selected cutting, which is typically a precursor to outright deforestation, climbed 15.6% year over year.
2022’s tally represents an area nearly the size of Puerto Rico or Cypress. But the actual area of forest loss over the past 12 months is significantly higher: INPE is expected to release its findings from analysis of high resolution satellite imagery in October or November. That analysis provides a more detailed picture because it captures deforestation missed by DETER, which uses coarser resolution satellite imagery.
However DETER data provides early insight on trends in the Amazon. Since the 2006/2007 deforestation year, data from INPE’s two systems have moved generally in step with each other. Therefore the latest data may be indicative of another high deforestation year in the Brazilian Amazon.
After declining sharply between the mid-2000s and 2012, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has been trending higher. It has especially accelerated since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019 after a campaign where he disparaged environmental defenders and promised to open vast swathes of the Amazon to logging, mining, and industrial agriculture.
Since coming to power, Bolsonaro has followed through on those pledges. His administration has weakened environmental laws and law enforcement, stripped protected areas of their status, and encouraged ranchers and farmers to clear forests, alarming environmentalists and scientists concerned about the fate of the Amazon, which shows signs of losing its resilience in the face of rising deforestation and the worsening effects of climate change.
According to a growing body of research, the Amazon rainforest may be approaching a tipping point where rainfall drops precipitously in the southern and eastern parts of the basin, triggering a transition toward a drier, savanna-like landscape which is more prone to fire. Such a forest die-off would have significant implications for efforts to address climate change and biodiversity loss, while also potentially impacting regions that depend on rainfall generated by the Amazon, like South America’s agricultural heartland in Brazil and Argentina as well as some of the continent’s largest cities.
Update 8:30 am Pacific time: 2022 numbers have been changed to reflect a revision in INPE data from prior periods. Specifically, the DETER total for August 1, 2021 to July 31, 2022 has been updated to 8,590 sq km, up from the 8,555 sq km in the original version of this story.
Header image: Apuí, Amazonas state. Greenpeace Brazil flew over the southern Amazonas and northern Rondônia states in Brazil to monitor deforestation and forest fires in the Amazon in July 2022. © Christian Braga / Greenpeace