Amazon Deforestation

Assembled from 49 blocks · 2 evidence · 36 related

1. Story
2. The conversion of standing forest to other land uses, overwhelmingly concentrated in Brazil and overwhelmingly to cattle pasture, with soy, timber extraction, land speculation and mining behind it. The sequence is consistent enough to be predictive: a road is opened or improved, land values along it rise, forest is cleared and burned, cattle are placed on it to establish a possession claim, and mechanised cropping follows on the better soils once the claim is settled. Roughly a fifth of the original Brazilian Amazon forest has been cleared. What makes the record readable is that Brazil publishes it: INPE has produced an annual wall-to-wall clearance figure since 1988, which is why the Amazon has a measured deforestation history and most tropical forests do not. That record shows swings that are political rather than economic - a peak in the mid-1990s, a second peak in 2004, then a fall of roughly four-fifths over the following decade as enforcement, satellite alerts, credit restrictions and supply-chain agreements were applied together, a reversal from the mid-2010s to a peak in 2021, and a second sharp fall from 2023.
3. Knowledge
4. Moisture Recycling
5. Amazon Deforestation
6. BR-163 (Cuiaba-Santarem Highway)
7. The Amazon Dieback Threshold
8. Connections
9. Jaguar (Panthera onca)
10. Indigenous Peoples and Demarcated Territories of the Amazon
11. BR-163 (Cuiaba-Santarem Highway)
12. Moisture Recycling
13. The Amazon Dieback Threshold
14. Forest Degradation
15. The Southeastern Amazon as a Carbon Source
16. Satellite Deforestation Monitoring
17. PPCDAm (Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon)
18. Amazon Soy Moratorium
19. Construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway begins
20. BR-163 opens between Cuiaba and Santarem
21. INPE begins the annual PRODES deforestation series
22. Clearance reaches the highest annual figure in the record
23. The Amazon Soy Moratorium is signed
24. Annual clearance reaches its lowest recorded level
25. Clearance reaches its highest level since the mid-2000s
26. Clearance falls to its lowest level in roughly a decade
27. The UN climate conference convenes at the mouth of the Amazon
28. Amazon Deforestation
29. Arc of Deforestation (Arco do Desmatamento)
30. BR-163 opens between Cuiaba and Santarem
31. Amazon Basin
32. Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
33. Cascading Moisture Recycling
34. Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO)
35. Amazon Deforestation
36. The Amazon Dieback Threshold
37. Eneas Salati
38. Isotope study quantifies Amazonian moisture recycling
39. The Amazon Tall Tower Observatory begins operating
40. Amazon Deforestation
41. Moisture Recycling
42. Carlos Nobre
43. The tipping point estimate is revised sharply downward
44. The threshold question is reframed as compounding disturbance
45. Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system
46. Pronounced loss of Amazon rainforest resilience since the early 2000s
47. Evidence
48. Supports the existence, method and shape of the annual clear-cut deforestation series for the Brazilian Legal Amazon from 1988 onward. V55 verification basis: the TerraBrasilis portal was probed in this session and returned EGRESS_BLOCKED; no annual value was retrieved. Every specific PRODES figure referred to in this pack is described as commonly reported and flagged as unchecked in the record that mentions it.
49. Supports the finding that the share of Amazon soy expansion occurring on newly deforested land fell sharply after the 2006 moratorium, and the observation that expansion shifted toward the Cerrado where no equivalent agreement applied. V55 verification basis: not retrieved in this session; the before-and-after percentages are deliberately not quoted.