Deforestation alerts in Brazil's Cerrado fell 19% in August compared with the same month last year. The savanna biome lost 238 km² (about 92 square miles) of native vegetation, against 294 km² a year earlier. In the Amazon, the sign flipped: alerts rose 12%, from 319 km² to 358 km². The figures come from Deter, the near-real-time satellite system run by INPE, Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, released at an event in São Paulo on Friday, the day Brazil marks Cerrado Day in honor of its vast tropical savanna.

Deter issues rapid alerts to guide enforcement raids; the official deforestation rates come from a second INPE system, Prodes, which is more accurate and published once a year. August sits in the heart of the Amazon dry season, when July, August and September account for most of the clearing, because dry vegetation is easier to cut. In the Cerrado the dry season starts earlier, in May, and usually lasts longer.

Year-to-date decline continues

Over the year as a whole, both biomes are still trending down. From January to August the Cerrado lost 3,810 km², a 7% drop (7.1% according to the regional outlet Piauí Hoje, which reviewed the same INPE data), while the Amazon lost 2,041 km², down 31%. Combined, the two biomes have lost nearly 6,000 km² in eight months, an area close to that of Brasília (5,760 km²) and about four times the city of São Paulo (1,521 km²).

The state ranking shows where the pressure sits. Pará leads Amazon clearing with 704 km², followed by Mato Grosso (611 km²) and Amazonas (347 km²). In the Cerrado, the largest totals are in Maranhão (1,025 km²), Piauí (420 km²) and, again, Mato Grosso (414 km²), a state that straddles both biomes. The Cerrado total is nearly double the Amazon's.

Looser rules, uneven enforcement

The clearing follows different patterns, according to Folha de S.Paulo, the newspaper that first published the August data. In the Amazon it concentrates on undesignated public land and invaded protected areas; in the Cerrado it happens mostly on private farms. The law is looser in the second case: under Brazil's Forest Code, landowners in the Cerrado may legally clear up to 80% of their property, or 65% in transition zones toward the Amazon forest. In the Amazon, the legal limit is 20%.

Deter exists to feed enforcement: its alerts guide inspection operations. Where inspections were stepped up, the decline was steeper. In Piauí, where the Cerrado covers 53% of the territory, the year-to-date reduction was the largest among states, 52.1% (from 877.91 km² to 420.11 km²), a result the Piauí Hoje news site credits to more inspection and greater use of technology by the state environment secretariat, Semarh. The clearing also carries a global cost: carbon released by felled vegetation feeds into the emissions balance Brazil reports under its international climate commitments.