On the morning of June 8th, Chief of Police for the state of Amapá in Brazil, Leonardo Brito, and his field team set out for a remote patch of the Amazon in search of deforestation. They were following the guidance of a team member stationed back at their base, verifying an area that had come […]

Last year was the second-worst on record for tropical tree cover loss, according to new data from the University of Maryland, released today on Global Forest Watch. In total, the tropics experienced 15.8 million hectares (39.0 million acres) of tree cover loss in 2017, an area the size of Bangladesh. That’s the equivalent of losing […]

Forest in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Flickr/João André O. Dias New data on global tree cover loss shows that Brazil experienced a major spike in tree cover loss in 2016. Below we explain several caveats and nuances related to the University of Maryland tree cover loss dataset that are important to understand the significance of this […]

Tersedia dalam Bahasa Indonesia di sini. Disponible en español aquí. Disponible en portugués aquí. Global tree cover loss reached a record 29.7 million hectares (73.4 million acres) in 2016, according to new data from the University of Maryland released today on Global Forest Watch. The loss is 51 percent higher than the previous year, totaling an area about […]

By Rachael Petersen, Lilian Pintea and Liz Bourgault Photo by the Jane Goodall Institute. Obed Kareebi, a ranger with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, marches through the dense forests of Kibale National Park in Uganda, an area with one of the highest concentrations of primates in the world. While the park is better protected than many […]

By James Anderson and Mikaela Weisse As Rio’s Olympic stadiums empty and athletes head home, Brazil’s big moment in the global spotlight seems to be drawing to a close. But if we take the opening ceremony’s commentary on forest restoration and climate change to heart, Brazil is more relevant than ever. Brazil’s forests, from the […]

Brazil is the poster child of using forest monitoring effectively to reduce deforestation. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has declined by nearly 70 percent since 2005, thanks in part to the Brazilian government’s satellite monitoring program known as PRODES (Program to Calculate Deforestation in the Amazon). PRODES data are the official national statistics on deforestation, […]

By Rachael Petersen, Liz Goldman, Mikaela Weisse and Dmitry Aksenov Which of the world’s forests are natural, and which have been planted by humans? Orangutans at Camp Leakey, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by James Anderson for WRI (Flickr). It seems like a simple question, but researchers have been struggling to answer it for years. Satellites can’t […]

By Rachael Petersen, Liz Goldman, Mikaela Weisse and Dmitry Aksenov Which of the world’s forests are natural, and which have been planted by humans? Orangutans at Camp Leakey, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by James Anderson for WRI (Flickr). It seems like a simple question, but researchers have been struggling to answer it for years. Satellites can’t […]