13 Straight Months Of Amazon Deforestation Increases; Highest Totals Since Data Set Start In 2007
Despite the global economic slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon appears to be continuing largely unabated with forest clearing over the past 12 months reaching the highest level since monthly data started being released publicly in 2007, according to official data released Friday by the country’s national space research institute INPE. Forest loss in Earth’s largest rainforest has now risen 13 consecutive months relative to year-earlier figures.
INPE’s deforestation monitoring system, DETER, detected 406 square kilometers of forest loss in the “legal Amazon” during the month of April. That brings the extent of deforestation measured by the system to 9,320 square kilometers for the year ended April 30, 2020, 40% higher than where it stood a year ago and more than twice as high as it was in April 2018. 5,606 square kilometers of forest have been lost since the “deforestation year” began August 1, 2019, the highest on record for this time of year.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest, has been trending upward since bottoming at 4,571 square kilometers in 2012. Prior to that, deforestation had been declining in the region thanks to better forest monitoring and environmental law enforcement, public and private sector efforts to curb forest clearing, the creation of new protected areas and indigenous territories.
According to a 2014 study published in the journal Science, the drop in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2004 and 2013 avoided the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent of taking all cars off American roads for three years — 3.2 billion tons.
EDIT
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/amazon-deforestation-increases-for-13th-straight-month-in-brazil/
