Rio de Janeiro (EFE).- Deforestation in Brazil last year spanned 20,576 square kilometers of vegetation, an area 22.3% higher than that destroyed in 2021 and equivalent to the territory of a country like Israel or Slovenia according to a study released this Monday by the scientific platform MapBiomas.
Brazil devastated an average of 56.4 square kilometers of forests, savannahs or country flora every day last year, an area the size of a country like Bermuda, according to MapBiomas, a network that brings together NGOs, universities and technology companies to analyze land use with the help of satellite images.
Deforestation without brake
MapBiomas’ 2022 Annual Deforestation Report includes the devastation throughout the Brazilian territory based on the analysis of the 76,193 points where satellites issued alerts for the disappearance of vegetation cover in all the country’s ecosystems, including the Amazon, the Cerrado ( savannah) and the Pantanal.
According to MapBiomas, in the last four years, since it began publishing annual deforestation reports, Brazil has lost about 66,000 square kilometers of vegetation cover, an area the size of a country like Lithuania or Sri Lanka.
The Latin American giant had already lost 16,824 square kilometers in 2021, an area 20% greater than that destroyed in 2020.
The greatest devastation last year in Brazil was recorded in the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest in the world, with the destruction of 11,926 square kilometers (an area the size of Qatar), 58% of all deforested vegetation in the country.
According to MapBiomas calculations, the Brazilian Amazon lost an average of 21 trees every second last year.
Ecosystem of Brazil affected
Among the ecosystems that lost the most vegetation cover in 2022 were the Cerrado, with 6,597 square kilometers deforested (32.1% of the total) and the Caatinga (semi-arid zone of the northeast), with 1,406 square kilometers (6.8%).
In the Atlantic Forest, the most devastated ecosystem in the country and which has already lost 71% of its vegetation cover, another 100 kilometers were destroyed last year (1.5% of the total).
The Atlantic Forest, however, was the only ecosystem where deforestation decreased last year, as the other five registered increases, including the Pantanal and the Pampas.
The MapBiomas study concluded that the areas most affected by deforestation last year were those covered by jungle vegetation (64.9% of the total), followed by savannah vegetation (31.3%) and country vegetation. (3.6%).
It also concluded that the most preserved areas, on the other hand, are those occupied by Indigenous Lands, where deforestation was equivalent to 1.4% of the area destroyed last year in the country.
Logging to open space for agriculture was what caused 95.7% of all deforestation last year in Brazil, one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of food and a global leader in products such as meat and soybeans.