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Agriculture encroaches on recovered areas of Brazil’s Atlantic forest

Over the past 41 years, the Atlantic forest has lost nearly 10 million hectares, while the area devoted to agriculture has gained 11 million hectares, as per data in a MapBiomas survey released Monday (Sep. 21), when Arbor Day is celebrated in Brazil. The survey also shows that one in every four hectares of native vegetation currently found in the Atlantic forest consists of areas that have regrown after being deforested since 1985. Notícias relacionadas:Pantanal: Tackling climate change depends on five other biomes.Amazon home to over 2,700 species of fish, study finds.Brazil’s cerrado biome may store more carbon than the Amazon.The data are part of MapBiomas’ annual maps of land cover and land use in Brazil. MapBiomas is a collaborative network of universities, NGOs, and technology companies focused on monitoring changes in land cover and land use in Brazil, with information ranging from 1985 to 2025. In total, Brazil’s Atlantic forest has lost 9.7 million hectares of mature vegetation since 1985 (areas mapped as native vegetation since 1985). On the other hand, during the same period, the biome gained more than 8 million hectares of secondary vegetation (areas that have regrown after being deforested). Despite this growth, the data show that deforestation has increasingly targeted regenerated areas with secondary vegetation. For example, from 2021 to 2025, 1.2 million hectares were cleared in the Atlantic forest – 700,000 hectares of secondary vegetation and 500,000 hectares of mature vegetation. Thus, 60 percent of the deforestation that occurred over the past five years affected areas of secondary vegetation. At the same time, the figures show that, with regard to the clearing of native vegetation, a downward trend has been observed in the Atlantic forest over the historical time series. Since the 2000s, the area of native vegetation cleared has remained below 2 million hectares in each five-year period. According to the study, the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo were the only ones that did not experience any loss of native vegetation over the past 41 years. Natália Crusco, MapBiomas’ technical coordinator for the Atlantic forest, points out that despite the positive progress made in restoring vegetation cover to areas that had lost their native vegetation, it is essential to prevent deforestation in the biome, which spans 15 states and is designated as a national heritage site under the Brazilian Constitution. “Regeneration plays a fundamental role in the recovery of the Atlantic forest – whether through restoration or the natural recovery of degraded areas,” said Crusco. At the same time, she argues, further loss of native vegetation – both mature and secondary – must be prevented, especially in a biome that is so fragmented and has historically been under pressure from human occupation. Covering an area of some 1.3 million km², the Atlantic forest is the Brazilian biome with the lowest proportion of native vegetation. In 2025, this vegetation covered 32 percent of its territory. Conversion of grasslands According to the report, much of the agricultural expansion in the biome occurred at the expense of grasslands, which lost approximately 11 million hectares in the period. Their conversion to agricultural land accounted for 19 percent of the changes in land cover and land use recorded from the beginning (1985) to the end of the time series in 2025. “Soybean cultivation expanded by 8.7 million hectares over 41 years and covered 11.11 million hectares in 2025 – an area 4.6 times larger than the area recorded in 1985. Sugarcane expanded by 5 million hectares and reached 6.15 million hectares, 5.3 times the 1985 area,” the document reads. In 2025, the Atlantic forest accounted for 25 percent of soybean, 50 percent of sugarcane, 68 percent of coffee (833,000 hectares), and 34 percent of citrus (141,000 hectares) of Brazil’s mapped areas. Another highlight is the expansion of forestry, which increased by 3.8 million hectares, reaching 4.9 million hectares in 2025. That year, half of Brazil’s mapped forestry area was located in the Atlantic forest. Paraná and Santa Catarina accounted for 46 percent of the biome’s forestry area. Urbanized areas Urbanized areas grew 2.5 times in the Atlantic forest from 1985 to 2025. The expansion stood at 1.3 million hectares, bringing the total area to 2.3 million hectares. More than half – 52 percent – of all urbanized areas in Brazil were located in this biome by 2025. The states of São Paulo, Paraná, and Minas Gerais recorded the largest absolute gains in urbanized areas from 1985 to 2025.