Deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon - Update for year 2022 and link to soy trade

Abstract Tropical forests are fundamental for the mitigation of global warming and for containing immense biodiversity, thus the knowledge about where, how, and why they change is of crucial importance in order to find countermeasures that can protect the remaining forests for all countries of the Amazon region. This report aims to give an overview of the recent forest cover changes in the Amazon region, and furthermore, for Brazil, the country with the largest share of the Amazon to put these changes into a political and institutional perspective. Consistent data specifically for monitoring forest degradation of the Amazon, caused mainly by forest fires and selective logging is scarce. Based on the JRC cloud-computed, largescale tropical forest monitoring approach, estimates and maps on forest degradation are provided in this report, together with a thorough interpretation of recent forest cover change dynamics, and a view on forest cover changes in the region from 1990 to date.