The aggregate area of deforestation in the Legal Amazon, in January, was 167 square kilometers, a reduction of 61% in relation to that registered in the same month of last year, when it reached 430 square kilometers. The data were released today (10th) by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), based on alerts made by the Deforestation Detection System in Real Time (Deter).
With an area of 5 million square kilometers, which corresponds to 59% of the Brazilian territory, the Legal Amazon is formed by the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, Tocantins and part of Maranhão.
Deter is a rapid survey of alerts of evidence of changes in forest cover in the Amazon, carried out by Inpe.
According to the institute, “the system supports the inspection and control of deforestation and forest degradation carried out by the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) and other bodies linked to this issue”.
Deter captures only part of the changes that occurred, due to the lower resolution of the images/sensors used and also the cloud cover restrictions. Therefore, the data can be revised.
The reference base for measuring deforestation in the country is carried out by Prodes (Project and Monitoring of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon by Satellite), whose database is considered more reliable, with an accuracy level close to 95%.
Currently, three systems monitor the Legal Amazon, each with a different function. In addition to Prodes and Deter, Inpe also uses the Selective Exploitation Detection System (Detex).
