BRAZIL NEEDS TO MONITOR ITS TROPICAL REGENERATION

This white paper argues that Brazil lacks an official system to monitor secondary vegetation (regeneration) in the Amazon, leaving these areas vulnerable. While the technology for remote monitoring is available and feasible, the authors state that public policy support and financial commitment are required to implement a system that would enable the country to track reforestation goals and enforce environmental laws.

• Secondary vegetation in the Brazilian Amazon grew significantly between 2004 and 2014, increasing by more than 70%. By 2014, over 17 million hectares showed signs of tropical forest regeneration, representing nearly a quarter of all previous Amazonian deforestation.
• Current official monitoring systems, specifically PRODES and DETER, are unable to detect secondary vegetation because they operate using a "deforestation mask." This mask records cumulative deforestation history, and since regeneration occurs within these previously deforested areas, the systems treat them as blind spots.
• The lack of a systematic monitoring system for secondary vegetation prevents Brazil from verifying progress toward international reforestation goals and monitoring rural property owners' compliance with Forest Code restoration requirements. It also hinders the ability of authorities to detect and respond to short-term violations and crimes affecting regenerated areas.
• Implementing a remote monitoring system for tropical forest regeneration is technologically feasible and could be achieved within one year with an estimated cost of approximately US $500 thousand.
• The authors recommend a dual-system approach for monitoring: one high-resolution system for measuring medium and long-term gains and losses (similar to PRODES), and a more frequent, lower-resolution alert system to signal recent losses for law enforcement (similar to DETER).
• To reduce costs, the authors suggest using existing remote sensing imagery from LANDSAT/OLI and CBERS/WFI satellites already stored in INPE archives. To overcome the issue of cloud cover in the Amazon, they propose bundling data into trimesters to select the clearest images.
• The paper emphasizes that data on secondary vegetation should be recorded and communicated separately from primary forest loss data to maintain the comparability of historical records and because the two types of forests have different policy implications.

APA

ASSUNÇÃO, J., ALMEIDA, C., & GANDOUR, C. (2020). BRAZIL NEEDS TO MONITOR ITS TROPICAL REGENERATION. Climate Policy Initiative. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/whitepaper-Brazil-needs-to-monitor-its-tropical-regeneration.pdf

Chicago

ASSUNÇÃO, JULIANO, CLÁUDIO ALMEIDA, and CLARISSA GANDOUR. BRAZIL NEEDS TO MONITOR ITS TROPICAL REGENERATION. Climate Policy Initiative, 2020. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/whitepaper-Brazil-needs-to-monitor-its-tropical-regeneration.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=ASSUNÇÃO |first1=JULIANO |last2=ALMEIDA |first2=CLÁUDIO |last3=GANDOUR |first3=CLARISSA |title=BRAZIL NEEDS TO MONITOR ITS TROPICAL REGENERATION |publisher=Climate Policy Initiative |date=July 2020 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/whitepaper-Brazil-needs-to-monitor-its-tropical-regeneration.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{assuno2020brazil, author = {ASSUNÇÃO, JULIANO and ALMEIDA, CLÁUDIO and GANDOUR, CLARISSA}, title = {{BRAZIL NEEDS TO MONITOR ITS TROPICAL REGENERATION}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2020}, month = jul, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/whitepaper-Brazil-needs-to-monitor-its-tropical-regeneration.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }