Deforestation in Brazil’s cerrado biome up 3% in one year
The Brazilian cerrado lost 11,011 km² of native vegetation from August 2022 to July 2023, as per data from the Prodes Cerrado project, which monitors the biome by satellite. The suppressed area is three percent higher than the previous result, which covered 2021–2022 (10,688 km²).
The figures were released by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) on Tuesday (Nov. 28). The institute is linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation.
According to Cláudio Almeida, coordinator of Inpe’s Monitoring Program for the Amazon and Other Brazilian Biomes, 75 percent of the suppressed vegetation was located in the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia—an area known by the acronym Matopiba, which has become known as Brazil’s new agricultural frontier.
