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...

This report demonstrates the powerful application of freely available, high-resolution satellite imagery recently made possible thanks to an agreement between the Government of Norway and several satellite companies.* This unprecedented agreement will bring commercial satellite technology, previously out of reach to many, to all...

As part of USAID’s Prevent Project (dedicated to combating environmental crimes in the Amazon), we conducted an updated analysis of illegal gold mining deforestation in the southern Peruvian Amazon. In early 2019, the Peruvian government launched Operation Mercury, an unprecedented crackdown on the rampant illegal...

Following the intense Amazon fire season of 2019 that made international headlines, here we report another major fire year in 2020. Using the novel data from our real-time Amazon Fires Monitoring app,* we documented over 2,500 major fires across the Amazon in 2020...

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...