2026-08-15 · hectares of primary forest loss (recent year)
Amazon loss is concentrated in a few states
Brazilian deforestation dominates headlines — hectares tell the story.
A few states hold the levers over Amazon deforestation. Of roughly 500,000 hectares of primary forest lost in the most recent data year, 78% of Brazilian Amazon loss came from Legal Amazon states, with the remaining 22% from other biomes and states. Concentration is leverage: enforcement aimed at a handful of territories can move the national number — and the carbon stored beneath it.
1 cell = 500 hectares of primary forest loss (recent year) (0.1% of Brazilian Amazon loss) · 1,000 cells
Context
The shares come from MapBiomas, a multi-institutional network of universities, NGOs and technology companies that has mapped Brazil's land cover and land use every year since 1985, building each map pixel by pixel from 30-metre Landsat imagery with AI algorithms on Google Earth Engine. Its data are open and free under a CC BY 4.0 licence. The roughly 500,000-hectare total is an illustrative recent-year figure.
The stakes go beyond tree count: MapBiomas reports that more than half of Brazil's soil organic carbon is stored in the Amazon, so which states clear — and which enforce — shapes the country's carbon ledger.
The 22% outside the Legal Amazon states is not a rounding error. Marking Cerrado Day in September 2026, MapBiomas reported that secondary-vegetation loss in the Cerrado, Brazil's second-largest biome, has climbed about 20% since 2017 — a sign of pressure building beyond the Amazon.
MapBiomas / INPE deforestation shares, illustrative.
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-08-15-deforestation-brazil