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Clearing of tropical forest in Peru 1995–2020
Clearing of tropical forest in Peru
08 JAN. 2026 publication date 601 Views

Often called Earth’s green lungs, tropical forests pull down massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, release oxygen and help regulate the global climate. While the threat of large-scale deforestation is well known, new findings reveal a surprising culprit – the clearance of small areas of forest accounts for more than half of all carbon losses across the Tropics.

The satellite images here, acquired by the NASA’s Landsat-5 on 10 July 1995 (left) and the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 3 August 2020 (right), show how small clearings in tropical forests have expanded in Peru’s Loreto region.

Read full story: Tiny patches of deforestation drive tropical carbon loss

Credits

Left image: USGS/ESA. Right image: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA

Licence

CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence

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