This territory was occupied by agriculture and livestock production, which now accounts for a third of the land use in the country; among the new items in the report, a 3D module projected on the terrain
Brazil lost 13.1% of its native vegetation between 1985 and 2021, which includes forests, savannas and other non-vegetation formations. Where did all this territory go? Towards agriculture and livestock production, which now accounts for a third of land use in Brazil. This is one of the main conclusions presented in Collection 7 of the annual maps of Brazilian land coverage and use presented by MapBiomas.
“This trend of rapid transformations represents major challenges for the country to be able to develop and occupy the territory with sustainability and prosperity. The land occupation and rural production need to be made compatible with the conservation of the biomes,” explains Tasso Azevedo, the coordinator of MapBiomas.
Collection 7 presents maps and annual data about the evolution of 27 classes of coverage and land use during the period, including a module about the annual evolution of the deforestation, secondary vegetation, irrigation, mining and pasture quality. There are also new items, such as the 3D visualization module projected on the terrain and tools for the temporal analysis of the data.
Julia, Shimbo, the scientific coordinator of MapBiomas and a researcher at IPAM, explains that “satellites help reveal the challenges of how to expand agriculture and livestock production without deforestation, how to protect the water resources and how urban occupations can be safer and less unequal.”
