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Brazil’s yearly deforestation up 15% – but it could have been worse

Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is up 15% on last year, according to preliminary results from coarse-resolution satellite photos. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has just issued the estimate for July, and that allows a complete August 2010-July 2011 calculation (AFP story).

The rise is disappointing given the drastic cuts in deforestation that Brazil has managed since 2006, thanks to tough legislation and enforcement. But it’s not so bad considering the concerns in March, April, and May, when sudden spikes in deforestation suggested the end result could be much worse. It seems that president Dilma Rouseff’s immediate announcement of stepped-up enforcement has had the desired effect, with June and July’s deforestation much lower than last year’s.

As remote-sensing analyst Carlos Souza, of non-profit research institute Imazon in Belém, told Nature in this week’s article about the problem: “We could say that the situation is still under control”. Imazon had predicted the 15% rise in deforestation based on August-June data.


The spikes in deforestation were ascribed to landowners anticipating a change in the country’s forest code. That legislation has required Amazon landowners to maintain forest on 80% of their land. But the new bill, passed by the nation’s House of Representatives, would create some exemptions for small landowners and allow state governments to adjust the 80% rule. It might still be reformed in the Senate (see ‘Brazil revisits forest code’).

It’s worth pointing out that the satellite results just reported are from the DETER satellite system, a year-round quick alert system whose coarse resolution only picks up deforested areas greater than 25 hectares. The true extent of deforestation – from the PRODES satellite system, with a sensitivity of 6.5 hectares – won’t be released until the end of this year, INPE says.

As a story from Scientific American notes, some loggers are trying to subvert the satellites by cutting down smaller units of land, which DETER will not pick up from month to month. Brazil plans to launch a new satellite, Amazonia 1, next year, to help spot that.

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