In 2019, the Peruvian government launched Operation Mercury to confront the illegal gold mining crisis in the southern Amazonian area known as La Pampa (Madre de Dios region). As a result, deforestation decreased 90% in this critical area (MAAP# 130). Some illegal gold...

*To download the report, click “Print” instead of “Download PDF” at the top of the page. In January, we presented the first look at 2020 Amazon deforestation based on early warning alert data (MAAP #132). Here, we update this analysis based on the...

For the first time, Peru has a detailed National Agricultural Area Map. This unique map, produced with high-resolution satellite imagery, was published by the Peruvian Ministry of Agrarian Development (MIDAGRI) in January.* This map reveals that the agricultural area at the national level...

As we have indicated in previous reports (MAAP #120), there is an “arc of deforestation” in the northwest Colombian Amazon, impacting numerous protected areas and indigenous reserves. Here, we emphasize that this deforestation currently impacts four National Parks: Tinigua, Macarena, Chiribiquete and La...

We present a first look at the major hotspots of primary forest loss across the Amazon in 2020 (see Base Map).* There are several major headlines: We estimate over 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of primary forest loss across the nine countries...

MAAP, an initiative of Amazon Conservation, specializes in satellite-based, real-time deforestation monitoring of the Amazon. Our geographic focus covers five countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru (see Base Map). We found that, since 2001, this vast area lost 65.8 million acres (26.6...

As part of our ongoing coverage, we present two key new findings about the Brazilian Amazon fires that captured the world’s attention in August (see our novel satellite-based methodology below). First, we found that many of the fires, covering over 450,000 hectares, burned...

For the 100th MAAP report, we present our first large-scale western Amazon analysis: Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and western Brazil (see Base Map). We use the new 2018 data for forest cover loss, generated by the  University of Maryland (Hansen et al 2013)...

MAAP, an initiative of the organization Amazon Conservation, uses cutting-edge satellite technology to monitor deforestation in near real-time in the megadiverse Andean Amazon (Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia). The monitoring is based on 5 satellite systems: Landsat (NASA/USGS), Sentinel (European Space Agency), PeruSAT-1, and the companies Planet and DigitalGlobe. For more information about our...

************************************************************************************************** Science Magazine: Combating deforestation: From satellite to intervention Full text Reprint (PDF): *Note: The article can only be viewed for free via this author page. ************************************************************************************************ A new policy article entitled “Combating deforestation: From satellite to intervention” was just published in Science, one...

When tropical forests are cleared, the enormous amount of carbon stored in the trees is released to the atmosphere, making it a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) that drive climate change. In fact, a recent study revealed that deforestation and...