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The Amazon rainforest, a critical global ecosystem, continues to face increasing pressures from deforestation, forest degradation, and climate-driven disturbances. This report provides an updated overview of recent forest changes across the Amazon biome, with a particular focus on Brazil, which contains the largest share of the region’s forests and largely drives overall trends. Using the Joint Research Centre remote sensing–based, large-scale tropical forest monitoring (TMF) framework, the report presents maps and statistical estimates of forest cover change from 1990 to 2025 for the Amazon region and its countries. Over this period, the Pan-Amazon has lost 17% of its intact humid forest (976,251 km2), of which 52% (511,705 km2) is attributed to deforestation and 48% (464,547 km2) to forest degradation. While deforestation remains strongly associated with agricultural expansion and accessibility, forest degradation (often linked to human-driven fire) has become an increasingly important component of overall forest disturbance dynamics. The 2023-2024 period was marked by severe drought conditions and widespread heatwaves, which substantially increased fire occurrence and intensity across large parts of the Amazon, particularly in 2024. While these climatic extremes created highly favourable conditions for fire spread, most fire events were associated with human ignition linked to land-use practices. As a result, total forest disturbance reached 64,686 km² in 2024, representing a 153% increase compared to 2023, largely driven by fire activity in southern and eastern Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela. In 2025, disturbance levels declined to 24,633 km² (-62%), reflecting the episodic nature of climate-driven impacts and post-fire detection dynamics. Marked differences are observed across countries. Brazil dominates in absolute disturbed area, whereas Bolivia experienced the highest relative impact, with more than 9% of its remaining intact forest affected in 2024. Other countries, including Colombia, Peru and those of the Guiana Shield, show comparatively lower disturbance rates (generally below 0.5% of intact forest), highlighting strong regional contrasts linked to land-use pressure, accessibility, and exposure to climatic extremes. A dedicated chapter further analyses the spatial and temporal patterns of fire activity, its interaction with land-use change and climate variability, and its role in accelerating forest degradation, carbon emissions, and ecosystem vulnerability. By integrating long-term forest change monitoring with recent evidence on climate-driven and anthropogenic impacts, this report aims to support informed decision-making to reduce forest loss, enhance ecosystem resilience, and safeguard the Amazon’s critical functions for biodiversity, climate regulation, and human well-being.

BEUCHLE Rene';  BOURGOIN Clement;  CARREIRAS Joao;  SEDANO Fernando;  ACHARD Frederic; 

2026-05-12

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC146168

978-92-68-39796-1 (online),   

1831-9424 (online),   

EUR 40718,    OP KJ-01-26-201-EN-N (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC146168,   

10.2760/2382625 (online),