Brazil deforested an area twice the size of Germany in 38 years

Brazil deforested in the last 38 years about 96 million hectares of native vegetation, an area equivalent to 2.5 times the size of Germanymost in the amazonaccording to a study released this Thursday by the MapBiomas platform.

In the largest tropical forest on the planet alone, the area converted for some human use, such as cities or agricultural activities, was 52 million hectares of native vegetation during the period, almost the same area as France.

The data corresponds to the latest Mapbiomas report on land use between 1985 and 2022, prepared with the help of satellite images and artificial intelligence.

According to the study, of all the area that was anthropized -converted for human use- in five centuries in the country, 33% occurred in the last 38 years, which led to the proportion of native vegetation that remains intact in Brazil fell from 76% to 64% in the period.

This process occurred with greater force in the Amazon and in the Cerrado (Brazilian savannah) where, in that period, 52 and 31.9 million hectares, respectively, were anthropized.

However, proportionally to the existing vegetation in 1985, the biomes that lost the most native vegetation by 2022 were the Cerrado (25%) and the Pampa (24%).

Agriculture and livestock, the great responsible

The advance of agriculture and livestock is observed in all Brazilian biomes between 1985 and 2022.

The area occupied by agriculture in the Amazon jumped from 3% to 16%; in the Pantanal, from 5% to 15%; in the Pampa, from 29% to 44%; and in the Caatinga (semi-arid chaparral region in northeastern Brazil), from 33% to 40%.

“In the Cerrado, agricultural activities now occupy half of the biome (50%). In 1985 it was little more than a third (34%)”, the study points out.

Throughout Brazil, the area occupied by agricultural activities increased from 22% to 33%. Pastures occupied more than 61.4 million hectares between 1985 and 2022 and agricultural areas 41.9 million hectares in the same period.

The advance of agriculture occurred mainly in forested areas, which lost 58.6 million hectares in the period, according to Mapbiomas, a network created by NGOs, universities and technology companies to analyze land use with the help of images. of satellite.

Source: EFE