Deforestation Fronts 2020

WWF developed a global analysis of the world's most important deforestation areas or deforestation fronts in 2015. This assessment was revised in 2020 as part of the WWF Deforestation Fronts Report. An Emerging Hotspot Analysis was used to derive deforestation fronts using the ArcGIS Emerging Hot Spot Analysis tool. This analysis was undertaken in 10km² hexagons, within country boundaries, based on the remote sensing data series from Terra-i data for Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania for the period from 2004 to 2017 for which validated data was available. Locations with the highest incidence of deforestation were selected in the tropical and subtropical biomes in each country. Following the hotspot analysis, a visual interpretation of the spatial clustering of deforestation hotspots in the selected biomes by country was conducted in order to delineate the boundaries of deforestation fronts, which comprise all countries in which deforestation hotspots were detected. Deforestation fronts are places that contain an important area of remaining forests where there is a relatively larger spatial concentration or clustering of deforestation hotspots (measured in 10km2 hexagons). As a result of this exercise, based on the Terra-i data, 30 countries were retained in the analysis.