The Brazilian government has built a map to help commodity exporters comply with the European Union’s new regulation on deforestation-free products, or EUDR. The country’s National Space Research Institute, INPE, created new technology to generate deforestation data in polygons of a half-hectare (1.2-acre) threshold — one of the EUDR requirements. Brazil’s official deforestation data for the Amazon comes from INPE’s satellite-based monitoring system, PRODES, which uses a one-hectare threshold. “It was the first time we did [this in] less than 1 hectare [2.5 acres],” Claudio Almeida, coordinator of INPE’s BiomasBR monitoring program, told Mongabay by phone. The EUDR, when it comes into effect at the end of 2026 (delayed for the second year in a row), will require suppliers to provide geolocalized data and other documentation to prove that their products exported to the EU aren’t sourced from areas illegally deforested after Dec. 31, 2020. The legislation aims to address increasing claims of products imported into the EU being linked to illegal deforestation, including in the Amazon Rainforest, and will target seven commodities: soy, cattle, rubber, palm oil, coffee, cocoa and timber. Graphic by Andrés Alegría/Mongabay. PRODES’ annual deforestation rate refers to data from Aug. 1 from the previous year to July 31 in the following year, but INPE also used high resolution satellite imagery and developed new technology to produce deforestation data with the cutoff date required by EUDR, Almeida said. December is the start of the Amazon rainy season, which poses challenges to track deforestation due to the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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