Between August 2015 and July 2016, 7,989 square kilometers (km2) of forest were completely leveled in the nine states of Legal Amazonia. This constituted a 29% increase in deforestation compared to the previous period analyzed. It was the first time since 2010 that the region surpassed the 7,000 km2 mark of newly deforested area. The estimates were published in November 2016 by the Brazilian Amazon Deforestation Satellite Monitoring Project in the Legal Amazon (PRODES), operated by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). In the period studied, Pará was the state with the largest area deforested (3,025 km2), followed by Mato Grosso (1,508), Rondônia (1,394) and Amazonas (1,099). With the exception of Amapá and Mato Grosso, all of the other states of Amazonia saw increased deforestation of vegetation areas. The mapping survey uses images from Landsat and other satellites to quantify episodes of deforestation in areas larger than 6.25 hectares.
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