PRODES

PRODES is the system Brazil's National Institute for Space Research uses to measure how much native vegetation is cleared each year, and it is where the headline Amazon deforestation figures come from. The institute describes it as the annual monitoring system for the suppression of native vegetation, built on satellite imagery and running since the 1980s, which is what allows one year to be compared with another on a consistent basis.

The detail that catches readers out is the calendar. A PRODES year runs from 1 August to 31 July, not from January to December. The institute's own technical note for the 2025 figure defines the period as 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025, and labels it the Prodes year 2025. The window exists because the Amazon has a pronounced dry season and cloud cover would otherwise make parts of the year unobservable. So a figure attached to a given year covers months that straddle two calendar years.

There is also a two-stage release. An estimate is published first, then a consolidated figure follows once the full image analysis is complete, and the two are not identical. That is normal and is not a correction in the sense of an error. It does mean that an early number and a final number for the same period can differ, so it is worth knowing which one a story is quoting.