“…it is the biome with the largest absolute area deforested in a single year…”
Dhemerson Conciani is a researcher at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and MapBiomas, with a degree in ecology and a master’s degree from Unesp.
Dhemerson Conciani, researcher at MapBiomas
AgriBrasilis – Is there a water shortage in the Cerrado?
Dhemerson Conciani – There is no water shortage in the Cerrado. In fact, the biome ended 2024 with the largest water surface area since monitoring began in 1985. What is happening is an uneven distribution of this water.
About 60% of all water in the biome is in artificial water bodies (hydroelectric plants and reservoirs), which experienced a 93% increase in surface area between 1985 and 2024. On the other hand, natural water bodies, such as rivers and streams, have decreased by 28% in the last 40 years.
AgriBrasilis – Fires have devastated 88 million hectares in the biome over the last 39 years. What is the current situation?
Dhemerson Conciani – The Cerrado has evolved to adapt to the presence of natural fires, but the pressures exerted by human populations have increasingly pushed the biome’s vegetation to extreme limits, causing degradation due to the high recurrence of fires or even the occurrence of fires in sensitive areas, such as the Cerradão and gallery forests.
In 2024, about 16% of the total burned area occurred in forest formations, which are highly sensitive to fire, degrading about 6.5 million hectares.
AgriBrasilis – Which regions are most vulnerable?
Dhemerson Conciani – Matopiba, where the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piaui, and Bahia meet, is now home to the largest continuous areas of native vegetation in the biome. Although it occupies 30% of the biome’s territory, almost half (48%) of all remaining native vegetation in the Cerrado is in this region. On the other hand, the region accounted for about 41% of all deforestation in the Cerrado over the last four decades, mainly for the expansion of agricultural areas (which grew 24-fold) and, to a lesser extent, pastures.
“…there was a decline in deforestation in all biomes between 2023 and 2024, from 16% for the Amazon to 41% for the Cerrado”
AgriBrasilis – Is it possible to recover degraded areas?
Dhemerson Conciani – The Cerrado currently has 10 million hectares of secondary vegetation, which has already undergone deforestation and is in the process of natural regeneration. These areas are extremely important for increasing natural areas and providing services to rural properties, such as protecting springs, pollinating crops, and increasing carbon stocks. These areas are low-cost to maintain and have high regeneration potential, and therefore should be prioritized in policies for the restoration and recovery of degraded areas.
AgriBrasilis – Deforestation is declining in the Cerrado but increasing in the Amazon. Why?
Dhemerson Conciani – According to data from the Annual Deforestation Report (RAD), there was a decline in deforestation in all biomes between 2023 and 2024, from 16% for the Amazon to 41% for the Cerrado. However, deforestation in the Cerrado accounted for 52% of all deforestation in Brazil in 2024: it is the biome with the largest absolute area deforested in a single year, about 650,000 hectares, which is a high and very representative figure.
AgriBrasilis – What technologies does MapBiomas use to perform environmental monitoring?
Dhemerson Conciani – MapBiomas uses remote sensing data from the world’s leading space agencies and private companies, such as the US space agency (NASA), the European space agency (ESA), and private companies such as Planet. These are essentially satellite images with spatial resolutions ranging from 5 to 30 meters in various spectral channels. All processing is done collaboratively by experts in each biome and topic through cloud computing on Google’s infrastructure, on platforms such as Google Earth Engine, using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
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