Tropical Rain Forest Deforestation Maps and Databases

The Tropical Rain Forest Information Center (TRFIC) is part of NASA's Federation of Earth Science Information Partners. TRFIC is led by scientists at the Basic Science and Remote Sensing Initiative (BSRSI) at Michigan State University in partnership with the Radar Science Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

TRFIC provides up-to-date information on tropical forest resources -- their status, the rate at which they are disappearing, current scientific research results, policy-related issues, and more. Data holdings include a large archive of Landsat imagery data, forest cover maps produced from Landsat imagery, derived products which depict the spatial extent and rate of deforestation, and special information services, including the Rain forest Report Card.

TRFIC's major focus is on tropical forests of South America (Brazilian Amazon) and Southeast Asia (Indochina), although data holdings also include imagery for North America, Africa, and other regions.

TRFIC map products for the Brazilian Amazon include forest cover, major classification types, percent of deforestation, vegetation and transition ecosystem classes, and mean carbon per vegetation type for the Legal Amazon Basin, and forest cover maps for the following states: Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Maranhao, MatoGrosso, Para, Rondonia, Roraima, and Tocantins.

TRFIC map products for Southeast Asia include forest cover maps for Indochina and forest cover maps for component countries (i.e., Cambodia, Loas, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam).

Derived TRFIC data products for Brazilian Amazon and Indochina produced from the analysis of Landsat MSS and TM satellite data show land use and land cover change in these regions. The following data values exist in the derived data sets: forest, deforested, regrowing forest, water, cloud, and cloud shadow.