By Mayara Subtil*
- Deforestation alerts in the Amazon fell by 37.2% between August 2025 and June 2026. During the same period, the Cerrado saw a 7.9% decline;
- In June 2026, alerts fell by 35% in the Amazon and 5.3% in the Cerrado, compared to the same month in 2025;
- According to Ane Alencar, director of science at IPAM, the reduction in both biomes demonstrates that public policies to combat deforestation produce concrete results when implemented consistently and reinforces the fact that deforestation is not an inevitable process;
- For the researcher, the drop in alerts does not mean that the Amazon is protected, since forest fires, degradation, illegal mining, logging, and climate change continue to threaten the biome.
The Amazon recorded a 37.2% decrease in the cumulative number of deforestation alerts from August 2025 to June 2026, compared to the same period in the previous calendar year. The data, released this Friday (10) by INPE (National Institute for Space Research), through DETER (Real-Time Deforestation Detection System), reveal that alerts in the Amazon biome fell from 3,959.98 km² to 2,485.90 km². In the Cerrado, the reduction in alerts was 7.9%, falling from 5,091 km² to 4,689.40 km² over the same period.
Looking at the month of June alone, deforestation alerts totaled 297.26 km² in the Amazon—a 35% decrease compared to the same month last year— while in the Cerrado, 481.53 km² of native vegetation clearance was recorded: a 5.3% reduction compared to June 2025.
For Ane Alencar, Director of Science at IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), the overall decline in alerts across both biomes demonstrates that public policies to combat deforestation produce concrete results when implemented consistently. “It shows that the political will to combat deforestation has truly prevailed,” she emphasized.
According to the director, the result also reveals that the reduction in deforestation is a direct response to decisions made by public authorities.
“From a scientific standpoint, this provides evidence that deforestation is not an inevitable process and that its reduction is a result of decisions made by society and the government—essentially, the political will to combat this problem,” she noted.
Alerts in the Amazon
The reduction in deforestation alerts contributes to lowering greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, conserving biodiversity, and maintaining essential ecosystem services, such as the regulation of rainfall and temperature. Even so, Alencar stresses that the INPE/DETER results represent only one step and that sustaining this downward trend in the data will depend on the continuity of forest policies.
The researcher also warns that the reduction in deforestation does not mean the Amazon is protected, as other threats continue to advance, such as forest fires, degradation, illegal mining, logging, and the impacts of climate change.
“We can reduce deforestation, as has happened, and still have more forest areas impacted by wildfires. So, we need to tackle both problems side by side. The major challenge now is to consolidate this decline and expand policies that help prevent fires and better control the use of fire. Because reducing deforestation is winning one battle, but we still need to reduce forest fires,” he emphasized.
Situation in the Cerrado
Data from DETER also show a reduction in alerts for the removal of native vegetation in the Cerrado biome. According to INPE, significant cloud cover over part of the Cerrado during June may have hindered monitoring of the biome. Since DETER uses satellite imagery to identify changes in vegetation, cloud cover can reduce detection capabilities in some areas.
For Ane Alencar, the simultaneous reduction in alerts across different biomes demonstrates that it is possible to make progress on a national strategy to protect native vegetation. “This prevents the problem from simply being shifted to another region,” she said.
According to IPAM’s Director of Science, the Cerrado plays a strategic role in Brazil’s water security by hosting the headwaters of the country’s major river basins and, like the other biomes, must be protected to ensure climate stability, agricultural production, and biodiversity conservation.
Official rate comes from Prodes
Although it indicates the trend in deforestation over the monitored period, DETER does not correspond to the country’s official deforestation rate. The system was developed to support enforcement and monitoring efforts by issuing daily alerts regarding clearing, deforestation, and degradation of native vegetation identified by satellite imagery.
The official rate is calculated by Prodes (Project for Monitoring Deforestation in the Legal Amazon via Satellite), also part of INPE. Unlike DETER, Prodes performs a more detailed analysis of the images and compiles the deforested area once a year.
The two systems, therefore, serve different purposes. While DETER identifies trends and supports enforcement actions in near real time, Prodes calculates the deforested area and publishes the country’s official rate.
*IPAM communications analyst. mayara.barbosa@ipam.org.br
