Thirty years of drivers and patterns of land-use change across the Amazon biome.

Abstract

The Amazon biome is crucial for achieving global biodiversity and climate targets but is severely threatened by deforestation and land-use change. While direct deforestation drivers have been analysed, their interactions with socio-economic and land-use dynamics, and the effects of policy interventions remain poorly understood, partly due to limited long-term data. To address this, we present and provide a pan-Amazonian dataset of potential deforestation drivers for the period 1990-2020 and assess their main trends, emergent land-use archetypes, and links to socio-economic dynamics. Our findings reveal a general commoditization of deforestation frontiers-i.e. expansion of export-oriented crops and extractive activities, with regional particularities and different degrees of commoditization. Understanding large-scale patterns of land-use change is key to support policies that effectively address the shifting interactions between deforestation, land-use change, and socio-economic dynamics. These include agricultural and extractive industries' expansion, migration and armed conflicts in the Amazon, and other frontiers of the Global South.