In the Amazon, forest degradation is outpacing full deforestation

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased abruptly in the past two years, after having been on a downward trajectory for more than a decade. With the country's president Jair Bolsonaro notoriously enthusiastic about expanding into the rainforest, new deforestation data regularly makes global headlines. But what fewer people realize is that even forests that have not been cleared, or fully "deforested," are rarely untouched. Indeed, just 20% of the world's tropical forests are classified as intact. The rest have been impacted by logging, mining, fires, or by the expansion of roads or other human activities. And all this can happen undetected by the satellites that monitor...