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An analysis of data from the MapBiomas historical series on land use in Brazil, released this week, reveals alarming information about the Cerrado, which occupies 23.3 percent of the country’s territory. According to the study, over 40 years, the biome lost 40.5 million hectares, equivalent to 28 percent of its native vegetation. This change, combined with transformations that had already occurred between 1985 and 2024, brings the total altered area of the Cerrado to almost half (47.9%). Notícias relacionadas: Brazilian biomes are better preserved in indigenous territories. Deforestation in Brazil fell by 32.4% in 2024. Black jaguar spotted for the first time in cerrado reserve. “The impacts range from habitat fragmentation and pressure on ecosystem services to regional changes in water regimes, which can make the biome more vulnerable to climate extremes,” warns Bárbara Costa, a research analyst at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and a member of MapBiomas’ Cerrado team. Savannahs were the hardest hit over the period, losing 26.1 million hectares, followed by forests, which declined by 10.5 million hectares. Flooded grasslands also decreased by 1.3 million hectares. Pastures and agriculture The human activities occupying these areas were primarily pasture, agriculture, and forestry, which by 2024 accounted for 24.1 percent, 13.2 percent, and 1.7 percent of the biome’s territory, respectively. Although pastures occupy more land, agriculture has expanded the most over the past 40 years, increasing by 533 percent since 1985, or 22.1 million hectares. Between 1985 and 2024, the Cerrado underwent significant changes in water coverage within the biome. Natural bodies such as rivers, lakes, and streams gave way to human-made water sources, including hydroelectric plants - Ascom/TO The study indicates that pastures experienced significant growth until 2007, but in subsequent years, agriculture expanded more rapidly. Temporary crops, such as soybeans, covered 25.6 million hectares in 2024, while perennial crops, such as coffee, occupied 700,000 hectares of the biome. “The Cerrado has been transforming at an accelerated pace over the past four decades. Native vegetation was most heavily cleared between 1985 and 1995, and in the subsequent decades, agriculture expanded and intensified, establishing the region as the heart of the country’s grain production,” notes researcher Bárbara Costa. Agriculture predominated in 42 percent of Cerrado municipalities in the first year of the study. Forty years later, this share had risen to 58 percent, while municipalities with more than 80 percent native vegetation in the Cerrado accounted for only 16 percent of the total in 2024. Natural water Between 1985 and 2024, the Cerrado underwent significant changes in water coverage within the biome. Natural bodies such as rivers, lakes, and streams gave way to human-made water sources, including hydroelectric plants, reservoirs, aquaculture, and mining. As a result, the biome recorded its highest coverage of water bodies - both natural and human-made - in 2024, covering 0.8 percent of the area, equivalent to 1.6 million hectares. The study shows that, over the entire period, 60.4 percent of the biome’s total water-covered area was human-made by 2024. Remaining vegetation Most of the remaining native vegetation is concentrated in the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia, a region also known as Matopiba. Together, these four states account for 30 percent of the Brazilian Cerrado. Despite still having a large area of preserved ecosystems, Matopiba lost 15.7 million hectares over 40 years. The clearing of native vegetation in the region was most intense during the last decade of the study, between 2015 and 2024, when the region accounted for 73 percent of the reversal in human land use.  The Cerrado saw a 20.8 percent decrease in the area under deforestation alert, yet 5,555 km² of the biome remained under alert - Agência Brasil According to researchers, in this recent period, the Cerrado lost 6.4 million hectares of native vegetation, with Matopiba accounting for 4.7 million hectares of deforestation. Agriculture has expanded, including into previously transformed areas, covering a total of 5.5 million hectares. Most native vegetation is found in indigenous territories, which maintain 97 percent of the Cerrado intact, while military areas and Conservation Units preserve an average of 95 percent of their land. Compared to other forms of land use, such as urban areas, where only 7 percent of the Cerrado remains, the contrast is clear. Rural properties and unregistered lands are also less preserved, maintaining only 45 percent and 49 percent, respectively. According to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, between August 2024 and July 2025, the Cerrado saw a 20.8 percent decrease in the area under deforestation alert, yet 5,555 km² of the biome remained under alert. The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) operates the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (Deter) and the Satellite Deforestation Monitoring Project (Prodes).

In a world of blink-and-scroll social media clips, the "slow television" trend is turning the ordinary into a spectacle, inviting viewers to linger over hours of unedited real life: a train inching through Norway’s snowy mountains, a stag calling in the forest, a crackling fireplace on a loop. It's television that dares to be uneventful, and has audiences hooked.

White Mountain National Forest website says: “The Radical Left Democrats shut down the government. This government website will be updated periodically during the funding lapse for mission critical functions. President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people.”

Jane Goodall, who died on Wednesday aged 91 in California, transformed how the world sees animals – and helped redefine humanity’s place in nature. RFI's Alison Hird spoke with Goodall in 2018, when a documentary about her early years in the forest was drawing new attention to her research.

Geologists have long known that 20,000 years ago, the sea off the coast of the city of Recife, Pernambuco, was approximately 125 meters (m) below its current level. At the time, the area that would later become Boa Viagem beach, one of the best-known beaches in the state capital, was occupied by forests. There may even have been rivers and waterfalls falling from the heights of what is now the continental shelf — the boundary between the shallowest and deepest areas of the ocean. Sea levels have risen significantly between then and now. According to Antonio Vicente Ferreira Junior, a…

On Bikar Atoll and Jemo Islet of the Marshall Islands, seabirds are returning, forests are regrowing and coral reefs are recovering. And it all stems from the removal of a single invasive pest: rats. Rats were once so abundant on Bikar and Jemo that they “utterly dominated the lower levels of the forest,” Paul Jacques, […]

Last Updated on October 3, 2025 For most of human history, the Earth was not a resource. Rivers were honored as ancestors, mountains as guardians, and forests as living sanctuaries of spirit. Colonial law shattered that bond, turning the living world into property while granting corporations the legal personhood that rivers and forests were denied. […] Source

From corporate greenhushing to AI forest tracking, fungal credits and tribal reforestation, this week we map where climate action takes root.

The reversal of a decades-old U.S. Forest Service policy means that federal wildland firefighters can now mask up if they want to — something Washington’s state wildland firefighters have been able to do for the past five years.  Since 2020, the state Department of Natural Resources has made N95 respirators available upon request to wildland […]

D’yan Forest leads a double life. By day, the 91-year-old singer and comedian is Diana Schulman, an aficionado of golf, swimming and cappuccinos. By night, like Clark Kent morphing into Superman, she transforms into D’yan Forest, a fedora-tipping, ukulele-strumming spotlight-stealer with as much material locked in her memory as a Homeric bard. She holds the... The post A 91-year-old Jewish comedian walked into a pub — and out with my heart appeared first on The Forward.

AI tools that allow hyper-realistic edits showed leopards wandering in Lucknow's residential areas sending local police and forest department officials on a wild goose chase.

It’s harvest season in Montana as the leaves change colors, the temperatures drop, and the pantries and freezers across our big, beautiful state fill with the bounty of field, forest and stream to face the coming winter months. Despite the chaos emanating from Washington, D.C., there is a sense of stability here where individualism, respect […]

With the arrival of cooler temperatures and lower wildfire risks, crews have scheduled a series of prescribed fires in forests across Idaho this fall in an effort to protect communities and natural resources, officials said.  A prescribed fire, also commonly called a prescribed burn, is a planned and controlled fire that may be used for […]

To see what Southern California looked like before millions of homes sprawled through the region, head to Cleveland National Forest. Nestled between Los Angeles and San Diego, the forest’s three districts are a refuge for the region’s wildlife and locals looking to escape the hustle and bustle of the state’s two biggest cities.  From above, […]

“Edible forests” are popping up in Boston. Scattered across the city, once-empty lots have been overtaken by fruit trees and berry-filled bushes. Open to the public, they are forage-friendly pockets in the urban grid.  The rise of urban food forests in Boston can be attributed to the decade-long work of the nonprofit Boston Food Forest […]

The Roadless Rule that the Trump administration wants to eliminate has not been controversial for 24 years, because it is grounded in common sense. Stirring up needless fights over public lands is more about smoke and mirrors than wise management. The Forest Service manages about 194 million acres. About 58 million acres of national forest […]

Prescribed burns are on hold during shutdown while logging continues. The post Shutdown causes ‘confusion’ across the Forest Service appeared first on High Country News.

For more than three decades Nigel Sizer has orbited the front lines of environmental policy. His résumé spans forest conservation in Amazonia, the launch of Global Forest Watch at the World Resources Institute, and campaigns on human rights, climate change, and even pandemic preparedness. The arc of that career has led him to an unglamorous […]

Nearly half of U.S. Department of Agriculture employees will be furloughed during the federal government shutdown, though key programs that support nutrition, forest preservation and wildfire prevention, the most pressing plant and animal diseases and agricultural commodity assessments will continue. Many offices, including county USDA service centers, will be closed or operating with minimal staff […]

Nearly half of U.S. Department of Agriculture employees will be furloughed during the federal government shutdown, though key programs that support nutrition, forest preservation and wildfire prevention, the most pressing plant and animal diseases and agricultural commodity assessments will continue. Many offices, including county USDA service centers, will be closed or operating with minimal staff […]