MapBiomas Network

MapBiomas is an open-science consortium founded in 2015 from a seminar convened by Brazil's Climate Observatory to address how annual land use and land cover (LULC) maps could be produced across Brazil at scale, speed, and low cost.^[1] The network operates as a distributed collaboration of universities, NGOs, and technology companies with no single legal entity or equity structure. Coordination is led by an independent scientific team including Tasso Azevedo (General Coordination), Julia Shimbo (Scientific Coordination), Marcos Rosa (Technical Coordination), and Carlos Souza Jr. (Technical-Scientific Coordination).^[2]

The core technical infrastructure is Google Earth Engine, which provides cloud compute and access to the full Landsat archive from 1985 onward.^[1] Annual LULC maps are produced at 30-metre resolution using a Random Forest classifier trained per biome by domain expert teams.^[3] Up to 105 spectral metrics per pixel are derived annually from Landsat multispectral bands and calculated indices. Brazil's territory requires approximately 380 Landsat scenes per year; the full national dataset covers more than 9 billion pixels.^[3] The latest annual LULC release, Collection 10.1 (February 2026), covers the period 1985 to 2024.^[4]

Beyond the core annual LULC series, MapBiomas Brasil operates a suite of thematic monitoring systems: MapBiomas Alerta (deforestation alert validation at 3.7 m using Planet imagery, covering all six Brazilian biomes)^[5], a Water module, Fire module (annual and monthly burned areas), Soil, Mining, Pasture, Agriculture, Atmosphere, and Climate Risk layers. A Rural Credit Monitor cross-references land cover with agricultural financing data to flag environmental compliance issues.

The MapBiomas model has been replicated across South America and Southeast Asia. Active national networks span Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, plus regional biome initiatives covering the Pan-Amazon, Atlantic Forest, and Chaco. MapBiomas Indonesia operates LANDY (LULC mapping), FIRE (burned area monitoring), and ALERTA (deforestation validation) for the Indonesian archipelago, operated by a coalition of Indonesian civil society organizations including Auriga, HAKA, Hutan Institute, and others.^[6] The network spans South America and Indonesia.

All MapBiomas data, maps, methods, and code are publicly available at no cost via the MapBiomas Platform, Google Earth Engine toolkit, GEE data assets, and direct GeoTIFF download. Users include researchers, policymakers, civil society organizations, and companies engaged in environmental compliance and supply chain due diligence.