Deforestation Hotspots in Brazil, 2005-2012

Natural land resources in Brazil have been subject to strong pressure from agricultural expansion over the past two decades. This map identifies and classifies deforestation hotspots in the Southern American country. Moreover, it hints to land use change dynamics such as leakage effects in tropical areas. The map represents the period between 2005-2012, and classifies deforestation hotspots in three categories: a) reduced, b) increased, and c) new.

Quality/Lineage: Land cover information from Global Forest Watch (https://data.globalforestwatch.org/) was used to identify deforested pixels per year. ArcGIS 10 was used to create spatial statistics of yearly information. R and RStudio were used to classify each grid cell as a hotspot and its type, and to convert the resulting cover information into a shapefile.