In the Media
Deforestation drops in the Brazilian Amazon (again)
August 03, 2012
Nature News Blog
The numbers just keep going down: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen 23 percent over the past year, according to an initial – and highly uncertain – analysis released Thursday by the Brazilian government.
Although the preliminary figures are based on course satellite data that is also subject to huge variability due to cloud cover, they serve as an initial indicator that deforestation is likely to hit a fourth consecutive record low in the season that ran from August 2011 through July 2012. The latest official figures, released in December, show deforestation dropping to 6,238 square kilometres last year.
It is impossible to say how well the 2012 estimate will hold up once the detailed analysis is released later this year. In 2010 the final tally came in substantially higher than the initial estimate, and Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, which runs the monitoring programme, specifically recommends against comparing different years when it comes to this particular data. But it’s so tempting…
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Keywords: Brazil, deforestation, illegal logging, Latin America, Law enforcement