We’re Creating a New Satellite Imagery Map to Help Protect Brazil’s Forests.

Why It Matters

Accurate, granular data empowers regulators to enforce the Forest Code, supports Brazil’s climate targets, and provides verifiable metrics for international reporting.

Key Takeaways

• Six‑times higher resolution than previous satellite maps
• Covers Brazil’s 2008 forest baseline
• Free access via Google Earth and Earth Engine
• Enables precise deforestation tracking for authorities
• Supports Brazil’s climate and biodiversity commitments

Pulse Analysis

The early‑2000s marked a turning point for Brazil’s Amazon, as illegal logging and land‑clearance surged to historic levels, pushing biodiversity loss and regional temperature spikes. Traditional monitoring relied on coarse satellite products that missed small‑scale clearings, limiting the government’s ability to verify compliance with the Forest Code. Recognizing this data gap, Google teamed up with Brazil’s environmental agencies to construct a high‑resolution baseline that captures the forest’s condition in 2008, the year deforestation peaked. This initiative aligns with Brazil’s pledge to halve illegal deforestation by 2030.

Google’s engineers processed thousands of Landsat and Sentinel scenes, applying automated cloud‑masking algorithms and radiometric correction to produce a seamless mosaic. The resulting imagery achieves a spatial resolution roughly six times finer than the publicly available baselines from the same era, revealing forest fragments as small as a few hectares. By publishing the dataset on Google Earth and the Earth Engine platform, the company democratizes access, allowing researchers, NGOs, and municipal officials to overlay the map with enforcement data in real time. Open availability also encourages third‑party innovation, from AI‑driven change detection to community‑level monitoring tools.

The high‑definition baseline gives Brazil’s environmental regulators a quantifiable yardstick for measuring the impact of recent policy measures, such as the 2023 revisions to the Forest Code and increased fines for illegal clearing. Precise location data shortens response times, enabling rapid deployment of enforcement teams to hotspots identified by satellite alerts. Internationally, the map strengthens Brazil’s reporting under the Paris Agreement by providing verifiable evidence of forest loss trends. As climate finance mechanisms increasingly demand transparent metrics, this publicly accessible resource positions Brazil to attract green investment while safeguarding its ecological heritage.