AMAZON, BRAZIL

The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest on Earth and is home to ten per cent of all plant and animal species. The rainforest is part of the Amazon biome, an area that spans around 3 million square miles and crosses eight countries. Over the past 40 years, more than 18 per cent of the Amazon rainforest found in Brazil has been lost – equal to the size of California – because of logging and agriculture. These images show the amount of deforestation between 2000 and 2019 around a portion of one of Brazil’s major highways, the BR-163. The highway, which is over 1,000 miles long, links soy-growing areas in the southern Amazon rainforest with ports at the river’s end.