Comparing annual deforestation derived from MODIS with Landsat-based maps in the Brazilian Amazon.

<p>The left column is MODIS results from this study, the middle column is PRODES (Program for the Annual Estimation of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon) and the right column is GFCL (Global Forest Cover Loss). The spatiotemporal patterns of deforestation agree remarkably well in these products with some disagreement highlighted in circles. (a) Deforestation near Pimenta Bueno, Rondonia (60.821W, 12.088S); (b) Deforestation to the south of Colorado do Oeste in Rondonia (60.754W, 13.396S); (c) Forests cleared for agriculture in central Mato Gross (55.974W, 11.466S); (d) Deforestation to the south of indigenous reserves in the lower Xingu river basin in Mato Grosso (53.033W, 13.158S). The MODIS map likely omits cleared patches below the 250 m pixel size and it also tends to overestimate deforestation over small but inter-connected patches (b). The two Landsat-based products have an advantage to real small-patch clearings, but may overlook some deforestation due to missing data from e.g. cloud contamination (a and c).