Over the past 41 years, the Atlantic forest has lost nearly 10 million hectares, while the area devoted to agriculture has gained 11 million hectares, as per data in a MapBiomas survey released Monday (Sep. 21), when Arbor Day is celebrated in Brazil.

The survey also shows that one in every four hectares of native vegetation currently found in the Atlantic forest consists of areas that have regrown after being deforested since 1985.

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The data are part of MapBiomas’ annual maps of land cover and land use in Brazil. MapBiomas is a collaborative network of universities, NGOs, and technology companies focused on monitoring changes in land cover and land use in Brazil, with information ranging from 1985 to 2025.

In total, Brazil’s Atlantic forest has lost 9.7 million hectares of mature vegetation since 1985 (areas mapped as native vegetation since 1985). On the other hand, during the same period, the biome gained more than 8 million hectares of secondary vegetation (areas that have regrown after being deforested).

Despite this growth, the data show that deforestation has increasingly targeted regenerated areas with secondary vegetation. For example, from 2021 to 2025, 1.2 million hectares were cleared in the Atlantic forest – 700,000 hectares of secondary vegetation and 500,000 hectares of mature vegetation. Thus, 60 percent of the deforestation that occurred over the past five years affected areas of secondary vegetation.

At the same time, the figures show that, with regard to the clearing of native vegetation, a downward trend has been observed in the Atlantic forest over the historical time series. Since the 2000s, the area of native vegetation cleared has remained below 2 million hectares in each five-year period. According to the study, the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo were the only ones that did not experience any loss of native vegetation over the past 41 years.

Natália Crusco, MapBiomas’ technical coordinator for the Atlantic forest, points out that despite the positive progress made in restoring vegetation cover to areas that had lost their native vegetation, it is essential to prevent deforestation in the biome, which spans 15 states and is designated as a national heritage site under the Brazilian Constitution.

“Regeneration plays a fundamental role in the recovery of the Atlantic forest – whether through restoration or the natural recovery of degraded areas,” said Crusco.

At the same time, she argues, further loss of native vegetation – both mature and secondary – must be prevented, especially in a biome that is so fragmented and has historically been under pressure from human occupation.

Covering an area of some 1.3 million km², the Atlantic forest is the Brazilian biome with the lowest proportion of native vegetation. In 2025, this vegetation covered 32 percent of its territory.

Conversion of grasslands

According to the report, much of the agricultural expansion in the biome occurred at the expense of grasslands, which lost approximately 11 million hectares in the period. Their conversion to agricultural land accounted for 19 percent of the changes in land cover and land use recorded from the beginning (1985) to the end of the time series in 2025.

“Soybean cultivation expanded by 8.7 million hectares over 41 years and covered 11.11 million hectares in 2025 – an area 4.6 times larger than the area recorded in 1985.  Sugarcane expanded by 5 million hectares and reached 6.15 million hectares,  5.3 times the 1985 area,” the document reads.

In 2025, the Atlantic forest accounted for 25 percent of soybean, 50 percent of sugarcane, 68 percent of coffee (833,000 hectares), and 34 percent of citrus (141,000 hectares) of Brazil’s mapped areas.

Another highlight is the expansion of forestry, which increased by 3.8 million hectares, reaching 4.9 million hectares in 2025. That year, half of Brazil’s mapped forestry area was located in the Atlantic forest. Paraná and Santa Catarina accounted for 46 percent of the biome’s forestry area.

Urbanized areas

Urbanized areas grew 2.5 times in the Atlantic forest from 1985 to 2025. The expansion stood at 1.3 million hectares, bringing the total area to 2.3 million hectares. More than half – 52 percent – of all urbanized areas in Brazil were located in this biome by 2025.

The states of São Paulo, Paraná, and Minas Gerais recorded the largest absolute gains in urbanized areas from 1985 to 2025.

A silent machine works constantly to ensure that millions of people in South America have access to water, rivers, and crops. This mechanism is called the Amazon, and it works as follows – moisture from the ocean produces rain over the forest; the water is absorbed from the soil by the trees and released back into the atmosphere as vapor; the wind then spreads this vapor across the entire continent, causing rain in various regions.

Researcher Julia Valentim Tavares explains that this is South America’s primary water infrastructure and the largest “rain machine” on the planet. A mature tree in the Amazon can release 200 to 300 liters of water into the atmosphere every day.

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“Imagine 400 billion of them working together every day. If we could visualize that moisture, we’d see giant rivers flying through the sky. That’s what we scientists call ‘flying rivers.’”

Marielos Peñaclaros, co-chair of the Scientific Panel for the Amazon – an organization that brings together more than 350 scientists dedicated to studying the biome – emphasizes that the forest is the backbone of water, nutrient, and carbon cycles at the local, regional, and global levels.

“In other words, the Amazon sustains life – not only in the Amazon region but on the planet as a whole.”

The two specialists participated in the latest edition of TEDxAmazônia, held in late August in Ecuador. TEDxAmazônia stems from a commitment to listening deeply to this region. It is the only TEDx event dedicated to a single biome. The conversations that emerge at these gatherings “cross borders, connect knowledge, and bridge the local and the global,” a text on the TEDx website reads.

Warning

In addition to emphasizing the importance of this water system, the scientists issued a warning – the devastation of the Amazon is already affecting the “rain machine,” and its breakdown would be catastrophic for the entire planet.

Activities such as mining and drug trafficking, combined with deforestation and wildfires, have directly impacted Amazonian connectivity – a key factor for the conservation of the biome, Marielos noted.

“The Amazon is a living mosaic of interconnected terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, home to a great diversity of cultures. These communities have a deep and interdependent relationship with the ecosystems through their ways of life, management practices, and knowledge.”

The effects on the climate are already measurable, she said, with evidence that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon results in less rainfall in regions of Brazil and Bolivia. In deforested areas, temperatures have risen, and dry seasons are becoming more intense and longer.

Julia Valentim Tavares is also measuring these effects from within the trees along the southern edge of the Amazon – a region known as “arc of deforestation” – where rainfall has already decreased and temperatures have risen over the past decade. She is investigating how long these trees can withstand droughts before their internal “ropes” are damaged.

“If the soil has water, this rope remains intact. During a dry season, the soil loses its water, and this rope becomes taut. The atmosphere pulls it upward, the soil pulls it downward, until the rope finally snaps. If this happens repeatedly in various parts of the tree, the tree literally begins to die of thirst.”

Global warming

In recent years, the region has also suffered from the effects of global warming. In 2024, the Amazon faced the worst drought in its history as a result of El Niño – a natural phenomenon involving the warming of Pacific Ocean waters that alters atmospheric circulation and has been growing in intensity.

Marielos points out that 88 percent of the Amazon basin felt the effects of this drought, which also disrupted the “rain machine.” Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, located in the Andes region, suffered from water shortages. In Quito, Ecuador – which is also outside the Amazon – water shortages led to power outages.

“The question we should all be asking is, where does the water for countless Latin American cities come from? Where does the water we use in agriculture, industry, and food production come from?” asked the co-chair of the scientific panel for the Amazon.

The drought also rendered the Amazon more vulnerable to wildfires, which reached record levels that year. Julia Valentim Tavares notes that smoke from the fires spread across the country, reaching as far as the Brazilian Southeast.

“This casts light on two key issues – first, the Amazon has never been far away. What happens in the forest does not stay in the forest. And second – millions of people depend on the Amazon, yet they still do not feel connected to it.”

The forecast that a super El Niño will occur this year has alarmed the scientists. “When these droughts occur, the forest either faces mortality due to water stress, or stops growing – plus wildfires. As a result, the Amazon ceases to function as a carbon sink and becomes a source of emissions, contributing to global warming,” she warned.

“We’re expecting it to be as strong as or stronger than in 2024, but the main difference is that last time, things happened that no one was expecting. How could a river dry up in the Amazon? Now everyone is talking about it,” Marielos noted.

In her view, a definitive solution will only be achieved through a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which depends heavily on replacing fossil fuels with less polluting energy sources.

“We also have to invest in connectivity – restoring degraded areas, rehabilitating those that were deforested for production, and reestablishing this ecological connectivity, because the Amazon is already approaching the point of no return, and because the total loss of this connectivity would be catastrophic for the entire world.”

*The reporter attended TEDxAmazônia at the invitation of the event organizers.