Amazon deforestation alerts fall to 2,874 km², the lowest level since 2013

What has improved. Between August 1, 2025 and July 31, 2026, the DETER system of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) recorded 2,874.38 km² of deforestation alerts in the Amazon. In the previous twelve months the figure had been 4,495 km²: a 36% decline. Compared with the previous decade’s average, the reduction is 55.6%. This is the lowest total since the current DETER series began; including data from the system that preceded it, the last period with a lower figure dates back to 2012-2013, with 2,766 km².

The decline is not confined to the Amazon. In the Cerrado, alerts fell to 5,119 km², down 7.8% year-on-year and the lowest in five years. Consolidated data from the PRODES system, covering the period August 2024-July 2025 — a different and earlier interval — show declines of 34.3% in the Caatinga, 15.3% in the Atlantic Forest and 41.7% in the Pampa.

Biome	System	Figure	Change
Amazon	DETER, Aug 2025-Jul 2026	2,874 km²	−36%
Cerrado	DETER, Aug 2025-Jul 2026	5,119 km²	−7.8%
Caatinga	PRODES, Aug 2024-Jul 2025	—	−34.3%
Atlantic Forest	PRODES, Aug 2024-Jul 2025	—	−15.3%
Pampa	PRODES, Aug 2024-Jul 2025	—	−41.7%

For whom. The area not cleared in a year amounts to roughly 1,600 km² saved compared with the previous period in a single biome. The benefit is spread across different scales: communities living within forest areas, who bear the most direct pressure from deforestation; Brazil’s national emissions balance, of which land-use change is a significant component; and the basin’s hydrological function, which affects agriculture in the country’s center-south. The data across five biomes show that the contraction is not concentrated in a single geographic area.

How we know this, and what the limits are. The source is the DETER satellite monitoring system, run by INPE, a public research body; the figures were presented on August 7, 2026 at the institute’s headquarters in São José dos Campos, on the occasion of its sixty-fifth anniversary. The data were picked up and verified by Mongabay, by edie and by the Bloomberg agency through The Spokesman-Review.

Three limitations must be stated. First: DETER produces alerts, that is, rapid signals intended to guide enforcement action, not the consolidated measure of deforestation, which is the task of the PRODES system and comes later. The two figures are not interchangeable, and in the table above they indeed refer to different periods. Second: optical satellite monitoring depends on cloud cover, and year-to-year weather variations can affect how much surface area is observable. Third: the alerts measure detected clearing, not the forest’s overall condition, which also depends on degradation, fires and fragmentation.

On the interpretation of the result, the positions are not neutral. Márcio Astrini, quoted in the sources reporting the data, describes the decline as “a solid result, stemming from the government’s actions to protect the forest.” This is a causal attribution that the available material does not accompany with an indication of the role of the person making it, and one that the numbers alone do not establish: DETER alerts measure how much was cleared, not why.

The next verifiable check will come with the publication of consolidated PRODES data for the period August 2025-July 2026, which will show whether the rapid estimate of 2,874 km² holds up against the definitive measurement.