Deforestation Pressures in Monsoon and Rainforest Belts

Brazil has tracked deforestation of its portion of the Amazon since 1988 through the PRODES satellite monitoring program run by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which uses Landsat and related imagery to produce an annual official estimate of forest clearing across the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Deforestation peaked at 27,772 square kilometers cleared in a single year in 2004, then declined sharply through a combination of stronger enforcement, satellite-based near-real-time alert systems, an industry soy moratorium, and international pressure, reaching a low of roughly 4,571 square kilometers in 2012 — before climbing again in the late 2010s and early 2020s under reduced enforcement and weakened environmental policy, with INPE recording more than 13,000 square kilometers cleared in 2021 alone, among the highest annual totals in over a decade.