Amazon deforestation alerts fall to lowest level since 2013, Brazilian data show
Brazil’s INPE recorded 2,874 km² of Amazon deforestation alerts in the year to July 2026, down about 36 percent from the previous 12 months.
Photo by Miguel Cuenca on Pexels
Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) recorded 2,874 square kilometers (1,110 square miles) of Amazon deforestation alerts between August 1, 2025, and July 31, 2026, the lowest 12-month total in that dataset since 2013, Mongabay reported on August 9, 2026. The figure is about 36 percent below the previous 12-month period and 55.6 percent below the average of the preceding decade, according to INPE data cited by Mongabay. A Washington Post/Bloomberg wire report published two days earlier, on August 7, 2026, cited the same 2,874 km² total for the same period but put the year-over-year decline at 37 percent, a discrepancy of one percentage point between the two accounts of the same underlying data.
How Brazil measures Amazon deforestation
The Amazon deforestation alerts come from INPE’s DETER system, a near-real-time monitoring tool originally launched in 2004 and designed to guide law enforcement rather than serve as an official annual deforestation count. The current DETER series, which the “lowest since 2013” comparison is drawn from, began in 2015. INPE also runs PRODES, a separate annual system that uses higher-resolution Landsat satellite imagery to produce Brazil’s official deforestation-rate benchmark, typically published in October or November. PRODES figures for the August 2025-to-July 2026 period had not yet been released at the time of the DETER data’s publication, so the 2,874 km² alert total should not be treated as the final official deforestation rate for the period.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| DETER alerts, Aug 2025-Jul 2026 | 2,874 km² (1,110 sq mi) |
| Change vs previous 12 months | -36% (Mongabay) / -37% (Washington Post/Bloomberg) |
| Change vs preceding 10-year average | -55.6% |
| Current DETER series start year | 2015 |
Regional trends and context
For a separate, shorter window covering August 2025 through March 2026, INPE data reported by Mongabay showed declines concentrated in specific states: Para fell 52 percent, or 467 fewer square kilometers than the same period a year earlier, while Mato Grosso fell 38 percent, a reduction of 163 square kilometers. Amazonas cleared 219 km² compared with 335 km² in the prior nine-month period. These regional figures cover a different, shorter timeframe than the full 12-month total above and should not be added to it. Mongabay also reported that deforestation alerts fell in Brazil’s Cerrado, Caatinga, Atlantic Forest and Pampa biomes over the same period, with the Cerrado reaching a five-year low.
The decline follows a rise in Amazon deforestation during the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro and has been attributed to stepped-up enforcement since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to office in 2023. The trend also comes as Brazilian reforestation company Mombak has delivered more than 21,000 verified carbon removal credits from Amazon reforestation to corporate buyers including Google and McKinsey, part of a wider push to combine forest protection with market-based restoration. Separate research has previously found that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon runs up to 83 percent lower inside indigenous-protected areas than in unprotected land, underscoring how land-tenure status shapes forest-loss patterns alongside national enforcement trends.
Background
Satellite monitoring of the Brazilian Amazon has operated in some form since 1988 under PRODES, which uses annual Landsat imagery to produce Brazil’s official deforestation figures. DETER was added in 2004 to give authorities faster, near-real-time alerts so they could intervene before clearing spread, though its coarser resolution means it is not used as the official annual benchmark. Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon have fluctuated sharply with government policy over the past two decades, falling through the mid-2000s and 2010s, rising again after 2019, and now falling again under the current administration’s enforcement push. The DETER alert total for August 2025 to July 2026 will be followed by PRODES’s own annual figure later in 2026, which will show whether the decline holds up under Brazil’s official measurement standard.
Sources: Mongabay; The Spokesman-Review (Washington Post/Bloomberg wire)
Featured image: photo by Miguel Cuenca on Pexels (free Pexels license).
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I specialize in sustainability education, curriculum co-creation, and early-stage project strategy. At WINSS, I craft articles on sustainability, transformative AI, and related topics. When I’m not writing, you’ll find me chasing the perfect sushi roll, exploring cities around the globe, or unwinding with my dog Puffy — the world’s most loyal sidekick.
