By Lucas Guaraldo
Since 1987, the Cerrado has lost 7.9 million hectares of secondary vegetation—an area nearly twice the size of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The data was collected in an unprecedented survey conducted by researchers from IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) as part of the MapBiomas network for Cerrado Day, celebrated on September 11. In 2025, secondary vegetation covered 7.5 million hectares in the biome, equivalent to 8% of the Cerrado’s remaining vegetation cover.
Secondary vegetation is an area of native vegetation that grows after deforestation. Its recovery can occur either through natural growth or regeneration of native vegetation or through restoration initiatives and actions. Although its emergence offsets part of the losses caused by deforestation, its vulnerability compromises the conservation of the Cerrado.
Without specific protection mechanisms in place, 73% of the secondary vegetation lost in the biome is deforested again within ten years of the initial clearing, compromising its ability to recover and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—the primary driver of global warming.
“As secondary vegetation develops, it can accumulate biomass and carbon, enhance landscape connectivity, and restore some of its ecological functions. This does not mean it is equivalent to primary vegetation, but it shows why its preservation plays an important role in advancing the Cerrado’s recovery,” explains Bárbara Costa, a research analyst at IPAM and the MapBiomas network.
Research conducted in forests across South and Central America has shown that secondary forests accumulate carbon 11 times faster than primary forests. However, deforestation in these areas accounts for 13.6% of the total deforested area in the Cerrado since 1987.
“In the Cerrado, most of the loss of secondary vegetation occurs in young areas, but another 27% occurs in areas that are 11 years old or older. This shows that this loss has also affected areas where recovery had already been taking hold for more than a decade. When an area of secondary vegetation is cleared again, the cumulative impacts on the ecosystem’s structure and diversity amplify the effects of degradation and tend to make landscapes increasingly less resilient to the effects of extreme weather events,” explains Dhemerson Conciani, a researcher at IPAM and the MapBiomas network.
Between 2017 and 2025, deforestation of areas with secondary vegetation increased by 19.9% compared to the period between 2006 and 2017, contributing to the cumulative loss of these areas. Over the past decade, 67 municipalities in the Cerrado lost at least 1,000 more hectares of secondary vegetation than they gained during that period. The most affected areas are concentrated primarily in Matopiba, an agricultural frontier that spans parts of the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia.
View the complete infographic with data on secondary vegetation in the Cerrado.