DETER — INPE's Near-Real-Time Satellite Alerts Powering IBAMA's Amazon Deforestation Enforcement

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) needed a way to detect forest clearing fast enough for federal enforcement to act, since INPE's older annual PRODES survey only reported deforestation months after it happened.

DETER was built to issue near-real-time satellite alerts on forest clearing so that IBAMA, Brazil's federal environmental enforcement agency, could dispatch inspection teams, issue fines, seize equipment and open police operations within days.

DETER has run continuously since 2004 and was upgraded to DETER-B in 2015, widening its satellite sources (CBERS, Amazonia-1, ResourceSat) and automated change-detection processing to flag likely clearings for human review. INPE has since extended equivalent daily alert systems to the Cerrado, Caatinga, Atlantic Forest and Pampa biomes, and collaborates with France's CNES on a faster successor, DETER-RT/TropiSCO. Alert data is published openly via INPE's TerraBrasilis platform.

In the 12 months to July 2026, DETER-flagged Amazon clearing fell to 2,874 km², down 36% on the previous year and 55.6% below the 10-year average — the lowest level since 2013. Results are uneven across biomes: Cerrado alerts fell only 7.8% over the same period versus 34–42% declines in Caatinga and Pampa.

INPE and independent reporting tie the decline to renewed enforcement funding and political will under the current federal government rather than the algorithm alone; IBAMA's own data shows a majority of historical deforestation notices have gone unpunished, underlining that satellite detection is necessary but not sufficient without sustained enforcement capacity.