In 2024, more than 5.18 million hectares of tree cover were lost in Russia. Tree cover loss does not just refer to deforestation; it can also occur due to natural causes to trees in plantations and natural forests. Therefore, by definition, tree cover loss is the removal of tree canopy due to human or natural causes, including fire. Russia was followed by Canada, with roughly 5.17 million hectares of tree cover lost. Impacts of tree cover loss Forests have an essential role in mitigating climate change and are rich in biodiversity. Nevertheless, annual tree cover loss has risen since the beginning of the century, remaining above 20 million hectares per year for most of the past decade. The loss of trees impacts both carbon emissions and the carbon storage capacity of these forest ecosystems. For example, the Southeast Asian rainforest was estimated to be a net carbon emitter as of 2021, with its emissions surpassing its removal capacity. In the Amazon, emissions and sinks were almost balanced out. Drivers of tree cover loss In 2022, the dominant driver of tree cover loss was large-scale forestry operations occurring within managed forests and tree plantations. That year, around 6.7 billion hectares of tree cover were lost due to forestry activities. Meanwhile, permanent conversion of forest and shrubland to non-forest land use for commodity-driven deforestation and urbanization contributed some 4.9 million hectares of tree cover loss.

Côte d'Ivoire lost half of its forest area between 1990 and 2022, making the African country one of the most affected by deforestation. Densely wooded countries in Central-South America, South East Asia, and Africa were among those seeing the greatest level of deforestation in the past three decades.

In 2024, Brazil recorded the largest area of primary tropical forest loss worldwide, at more than 2.8 million hectares. Primary forest loss in Brazil was considerably higher than in any other country that year, accounting for over 40 percent of global primary forest loss. Bolivia ranked second, with roughly 1.5 million hectares of forest loss.

Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Roraima data was reported at 436.000 sq km in 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of 284.000 sq km for 2023. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Roraima data is updated yearly, averaging 240.000 sq km from Dec 1988 (Median) to 2024, with 37 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 630.000 sq km in 1989 and a record low of 84.000 sq km in 2002. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Roraima data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Institute for Space Research. The data is categorized under Brazil Premium Database’s Environmental, Social and Governance Sector – Table BR.EVC001: Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate. 2024 is preliminary data.

Approximately *** million hectares of forest area were lost due to deforestation between 1990 and 2020. However, the deforestation rate has slowed over the last three decades, down from the total **** million hectares per year in 1990-2000 to **** million hectares per year in 2015-2020. The climatic domain that has shown the highest pace of deforestation is the tropical, which saw *** million hectares per year lost in 2015-2020. On the other hand, the boreal domain has the lowest deforestation rate, with a figure of **** million hectares per year in 2015-2020.

Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Pará data was reported at 2,362.000 sq km in 2024. This records a decrease from the previous number of 3,299.000 sq km for 2023. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Pará data is updated yearly, averaging 4,284.000 sq km from Dec 1988 (Median) to 2024, with 37 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 8,870.000 sq km in 2004 and a record low of 1,741.000 sq km in 2012. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Pará data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Institute for Space Research. The data is categorized under Brazil Premium Database’s Environmental, Social and Governance Sector – Table BR.EVC001: Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate. 2024 is preliminary data.

Brazil Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate data was reported at 6,288.000 sq km in 2024. This records a decrease from the previous number of 9,064.000 sq km for 2023. Brazil Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate data is updated yearly, averaging 13,038.000 sq km from Dec 1988 (Median) to 2024, with 37 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 29,059.000 sq km in 1995 and a record low of 4,571.000 sq km in 2012. Brazil Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Institute for Space Research. The data is categorized under Brazil Premium Database’s Environmental, Social and Governance Sector – Table BR.EVC001: Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate. 2024 is preliminary data.

Deforestation led to an annual loss of *** million hectares of forest in Africa between 2015 and 2020. The conversion of forest to other land uses affected mostly the eastern and southern areas of the continent, at a deforestation rate of *** million hectares per year. In Western and Central Africa, around *** million hectares of forest were lost per year in the same period. Despite a small reduction observed in the period 2015-2020, the continental deforestation rate has overall increased since 1990. From that year until 2020, Africa has seen the greatest loss in forest area more than any region of the world.

Overview

This dataset provides country-level estimates of agriculture and forestry-driven deforestation and associated carbon emissions for the period 2001-2022. A sub-national level attribution dataset is available for Brazil. Generated by the Deforestation Driver and Carbon Emission (DeDuCE) model, it amalgamates remotely sensed datasets with extensive agricultural statistics to estimate deforestation attributable to agricultural and forestry activities globally. Developed utilizing Google Earth Engine and Python, DeDuCE comprehensively covers over 9300 unique country-commodity footprints across 179 countries and 184 commodities within the specified period, presenting an unmatched scope and granularity of data.

Documentation

The manuscript detailing the dataset is currently archived at EarthArXiV: Singh, C., & Persson, U. M. (2024). Global patterns of commodity-driven deforestation and associated carbon emissions. https://doi.org/10.31223/X5T69B

The insights from this dataset can also be viewed at: https://www.deforestationfootprint.earth

Repository contents

The input and output/data generated by the model are archived here at Zenodo, and their description is available in 'README (files in the directory).txt'.

The columns of the (final) dataset 'DeDuCE_Deforestation_attribution_v1.0.1 (2001-2022).xlsx' in the folder 'Final Attribution Results' represent the following:

• Continent/Country group: All countries are divided into 8 geographical regions
• ISO: Three-letter country codes defined by ISO
• Producer country: Country of deforestation
• Year: Year of deforestation, ranges from 2001-2022
• Commodity group: All commodities are divided into 11 commodity groups
• Commodity: Name of commodity aligning with FAOSTAT
• Deforestation attribution, unamortized (ha): Annual deforestation estimates
• Deforestation risk, amortized (ha): 5-year amortised deforestation estimates
• Deforestation emissions excl. peat drainage, unamortized (MtCO2): Annual estimates of carbon emissions (based on AGB, BGB, deadwood, litter, soil organic carbon and carbon stock of replacing commodity)
• Deforestation emissions excl. peat drainage, amortized (MtCO2): 5-year amortised carbon emission estimates, excluding carbon emissions from peatland drainage
• Peatland drainage emissions (MtCO2): Annual estimates of carbon emissions from peatland drainage
• Deforestation emissions incl. peat drainage, amortized (MtCO2): 5-year amortised carbon emission estimates, including emissions from peatland drainage
• Quality Index: Flagging deforestation estimates

Contact

If you have any questions, you can contact us at:

Chandrakant Singh and U. Martin Persson
Email: chandrakant.singh@chalmers.se and martin.persson@chalmers.se
Physical Resource Theory, Department of Space, Earth & Environment,
Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

The general objective of this project was to update the national forest cover map to the year 2006. The specific objectives included calculating the rates of land cover changes at national, departmental, and municipal scales and comparing the 2006 map to the 2001 map that was generated with the same methodology. The new methodology used to generate the 2006 map made it necessary to create a new 2001 map. To describe forest cover at the national scale, the use of information from remote sensing, whether satellite images or aerial photographs, represented the most accurate data source.The elaboration of national maps of forest cover was based on satellite images from Landsat 5 and 7 as well as ASTER (only for the southwestern section of the country, in the area corresponding to the Landsat image of Path 21 Row 50). The forest cover for Guatemala in 2006 was estimated as 3,866,383 hectares, equivalent to 35.5% of the national territory. The revised value for 2001 is 4,152,051 hectares corresponding to 38.1% of the national territory. These values represent an annual net loss of 48,084 hectares, equivalent to a deforestation rate of - 1.16%. The net annual loss reported is the difference between a gross loss of 101,852 hectares/year and a gain of 53,768 hectares/year.

Please visit bit.ly/1lMJ9zj for full information before downloading. CGMFC-21 provides high resolution local, regional, national, and global estimates of annual mangrove forest levels using continuous data from 2000 through to 2012 with the goal of driving mangrove research questions pertaining to biodiversity, climate change, food security, livelihoods, fisheries support, and conservation that have been hindered until now by a lack of suitable data. CGMFC-21 provides the required spatiotemporal resolutions to not only set REDD baseline measures globally in a systematic manner, but also to account for forest degradation as well as deforestation on an annual basis. Countries showing relatively high levels of 21st Century mangrove loss include Myanmar, Guatemala, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Many nations that have reported mangrove deforestation in earlier periods such as Ecuador, Bangladesh and Nigeria, have stabilized their mangrove levels during this period. Indonesia remains by far the largest mangrove holding nation containing between 26.16% and 28.50% of the global mangrove area with a deforestation rate of between 0.26% and 0.63% annually. Global mangrove deforestation continues but at a much reduced rate of between 0.16% and 0.39% annually. Annual mangrove deforestation is now close to zero in the Americas, Africa, and Australia as well as in selected Ramsar sites and protected areas. The global mangrove deforestation pattern during the 21st Century is one of decreasing rates of deforestation, with many nations essentially stable, with the exception of the largest mangrove holding region of Southeast Asia.

Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Acre data was reported at 448.000 sq km in 2024. This records a decrease from the previous number of 601.000 sq km for 2023. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Acre data is updated yearly, averaging 444.000 sq km from Dec 1988 (Median) to 2024, with 37 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1,208.000 sq km in 1995 and a record low of 167.000 sq km in 2009. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Acre data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Institute for Space Research. The data is categorized under Brazil Premium Database’s Environmental, Social and Governance Sector – Table BR.EVC001: Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate. 2024 is preliminary data.

Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bolivia, and Paraguay are the world's largest GHG emitters from commodity-driven deforestation, a practice that commonly entails permanent tree cover loss. Gross annual GHG emissions from commodity-driven deforestation average roughly *** billion metric tones of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e) per year, with Brazil typically the biggest contributor. Commodity-driven deforestation caused more than half of all tree cover loss in Brazil in 2022, at roughly *********** hectares.

This data set includes tree cover extent, aboveground live biomass stocks and densities, annual tree cover loss, annual forest GHG emissions, and average annual forest CO2 removals (sequestration) and annual net GHG flux at the country and first (state, province) sub-national levels. Tree cover loss and emissions are available as annual data for 2001-2020. Emissions, removals and net flux are available as annual averages for 2001-2020. Tree cover is available for 2000 and 2010. Aboveground biomass stocks and densities are available for 2000. The tree cover data was produced by the University of Maryland's GLAD laboratory in partnership with Google. Carbon densities, emissions, removals, and net flux (megagrams CO2e/yr) are from Harris et al. 2021. The emissions data quantifies the amount of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere where forest disturbances have occurred, and includes CO2, CH4, and N2O and multiple carbon pools. (This replaces the emissions data previously on GFW.) Removals includes the average annual carbon captured by aboveground and belowground woody biomass in forests. Net flux is the difference between average annual emissions and average annual removals; negative values are net sinks and positive values are net sources. All values besides emissions, removals, and net flux are presented for percent canopy cover levels >=10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 50% and 75%, while emissions, removals, and net flux are presented only for canopy >=30%, 50%, and 75% and areas with tree cover gain. We recommend that you select your desired percent canopy cover level and use it consistently throughout any analysis. The Global Forest Watch website uses a >=30% canopy cover threshold as a default for all statistics.

Citations
Hansen, M. C., P. V. Potapov, R. Moore, M. Hancher, S. A. Turubanova, A. Tyukavina, D. Thau, S. V. Stehman, S. J. Goetz, T. R. Loveland, A. Kommareddy, A. Egorov, L. Chini, C. O. Justice, and J. R. G. Townshend. 2013. “High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change.” Science 342 (15 November): 850–53. Data available on-line from: http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest.

Harris, N.L., Gibbs, D.A., Baccini, A. et al. Global maps of twenty-first century forest carbon fluxes. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-00976-6
Global Administrative Areas Database, version 3.6. Available at http://gadm.org/

For further questions regarding this data set, please contact Mikaela Weisse at the World Resources Institute (mikaela.weisse@wri.org).

Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Amazonas data was reported at 1,143.000 sq km in 2024. This records a decrease from the previous number of 1,610.000 sq km for 2023. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Amazonas data is updated yearly, averaging 788.000 sq km from Dec 1988 (Median) to 2024, with 37 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 2,594.000 sq km in 2022 and a record low of 370.000 sq km in 1994. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Amazonas data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Institute for Space Research. The data is categorized under Brazil Premium Database’s Environmental, Social and Governance Sector – Table BR.EVC001: Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate. 2024 is preliminary data.

Information from Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 was used as the primary source of information, corresponding to 2010, although in certain areas images from 2009 and 2011 were used based on their quality. As secondary sources of information, information from 2006 orthophotos and images for 2010 from the ALOS-PRISM sensor were used.Forest cover in 2010 for Guatemala was estimated at 3,722,595 hectares, equivalent to 34% of the national land territory. The value for forest cover for 2006, published in May of 2011, was revised and a new estimate of 3,868,708 hectares was obtained. These values represent a net loss of 146,112 hectares of forest, equivalent to a net deforestation rate of -1.0% per year at the national level (with respect to the total existing forest in 2006). The results show that the net rate of deforestation continues falling compared to previous studies (-1.43% for 1991-2001 and -1.16% for 2001-2006) as a result of substantial increases in forest cover gain. However, gross deforestation continues to increase, reaching an area of 132,137 hectares per year for the analyzed time period.52% of the national forest cover is located inside the Guatemalan System of Protected Areas (SIGAP), which covers a third of the national territory. The remaining 48% of the forest cover is distributed in the other two thirds of the country. In face of this concentration of forest cover inside of Protected Areas, three quarters of the loss during 2006-2010 occurred inside of SIGAP and one quarter outside of SIGAP.

In 2023, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from commodity-driven deforestation were roughly *** billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e). Almost ** percent of this total came from deforestation in Brazilian forests, with Indonesia accounting for the second-largest share. Global GHG emissions from tree cover loss from all dominant drivers surpassed ** GtCO₂e in 2023.

Mangroves are important sinks of organic carbon (C) and there is significant interest in their use for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation. Adverse impacts on organic carbon storage potential from future climate change and deforestation would devalue such ambitions, thus global projections of future change remains a priority research area. We modeled the effects of climate change on future C stocks and soil sequestration rates (CSR) under two climate scenarios (“business as usual”: SSP245 and high-emissions: SSP585). Model results were contrasted with CO2 equivalents (CO2e) emissions from past, present and future rates of deforestation on a country specific scale. For C stocks, we found climate change will increase global stocks by ∼7% under both climate scenarios and that this gain will exceed losses from deforestation by the end of the twenty-first century, largely due to shifts in rainfall. Major mangrove-holding countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Cuba, and Nigeria will increase national C stocks by > 10%. Under the high-end scenario, while a net global increase is still expected, elevated temperatures and wider temperature ranges are likely increase the risk of countries’ C stocks diminishing. For CSR, there will likely be a global reduction under both climate change scenarios: 12 of the top 20 mangrove-rich countries will see a drop in CSR. Modeling of published country level mangrove deforestation rates showed emissions have decreased from 141.4 to 6.4% of annual CSR since the 1980’s. Projecting current mangrove deforestation rates into the future resulted in a total of 678.50 ± 151.32 Tg CO2e emitted from 2012 to 2095. Reducing mangrove deforestation rates further would elevate the carbon benefit from climate change by 55–61%, to make the proposition of offsetting emissions through mangrove protection and restoration more attractive. These results demonstrate the positive benefits of mangrove conservation on national carbon budgets, and we identify the nations where incorporating mangrove conservation into their Nationally Defined Contributions offers a particularly rewarding route toward meeting their Glasgow Agreement commitments.

We project the future of tropical deforestation from 2016-2050 with and without carbon pricing policies, based on 18 million observations of historical forest loss spanning 101 tropical countries. Our spatial projections of future deforestation incorporate topography, accessibility, protected status, potential agricultural revenue, and a robust observed inverted-U-shaped trajectory of forest cover loss with respect to remaining forest cover. We project that in the absence of new forest conservation policies, 289 million hectares of tropical forest will be cleared from 2016-2050—an area about the size of India and one-seventh of Earth’s tropical forest area in the year 2000. We project that this tropical deforestation will release 169 GtCO2 to the atmosphere from 2016-2050—one-sixth of the remaining carbon that can be emitted if the rise in Earth’s temperature is to be likely held below 2 °C. We estimate that a universally applied carbon price of $20/tCO2 from 2016-2050 would avoid 41 GtCO2 of emissions from tropical deforestation while a carbon price of $50/tCO2 would avoid 77 GtCO2. These prices correspond to average costs to land users of $9/tCO2 and $21/tCO2 respectively. By comparison if all tropical countries implemented anti-deforestation policies as effective as those in the Brazilian Amazon post-2004 then 60 GtCO2 of emissions would be avoided. Our analysis corroborates the conclusions of previous studies that reducing tropical deforestation is a sizable and low-cost option for mitigating climate change. In contrast to previous studies, we project that the amount of emissions that can be avoided at low-cost by reducing tropical deforestation will increase rather than decrease in future decades. Encouragingly, 89% of potential low-cost emission reductions are located in the 47 tropical countries that have already signaled their intention to reduce emissions from deforestation in exchange for performance-based finance (REDD+).

Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Rondônia data was reported at 325.000 sq km in 2024. This records a decrease from the previous number of 867.000 sq km for 2023. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Rondônia data is updated yearly, averaging 1,611.000 sq km from Dec 1988 (Median) to 2024, with 37 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 4,730.000 sq km in 1995 and a record low of 325.000 sq km in 2024. Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate: Rondônia data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Institute for Space Research. The data is categorized under Brazil Premium Database’s Environmental, Social and Governance Sector – Table BR.EVC001: Amazon Annual Deforestation Rate. 2024 is preliminary data.