• What is MapBiomas?

    The MapBiomas project is an initiative of the Climate Observatory and a collaboration network that involves universities, NGOs and technology companies with the purpose of mapping annually the land cover and use and monitoring changes in the territory.

  • What is MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest?

    MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest arises as a continuation of the initiative in Brazil that involves a collaborative network of specialists from Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, in topics such as land use, satellite remote sensing, GIS and programming. It uses cloud processing and automated classifiers developed and operated from the Google Earth Engine platform to generate a historical series of annual land use and cover maps of the Trinational Atlantic Forest.

  • Who produces the Trinational Atlantic Forest MapBiomas maps?

    MapBiomas Trinacional Atlantic Forest involves researchers and specialists in remote sensing, GIS, computing, biomes and land uses from each of the participating countries (Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay). The Argentine team is coordinated by Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina, the Brazilian team by ArcPlan and the Paraguayan team through WWF Paraguay. The teams work in a coordinated way processing the information in the cloud through the Google Earth Engine platform.

  • How can I download maps from MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest?

    The maps can be downloaded directly on the platform through the link: LINK

    Do not forget to download the codes of the legend in: LINK

    It is also possible to download the data directly from Google Earth Engine when specific territorial or temporary breaks are needed.
    In Google Earth Engine it is possible to access all Landsat Mosaic data and transition maps. To obtain the IDs of the MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest collection in Google Earth Engine, access: LINK

  • Why are maps shown only in raster format?

    The land cover and use maps of MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest are done through the pixel by pixel processing of temporal series of Landsat images (Raster 30 m pixels).

  • Can I download the data in Shapefile format?

    There is no such possibility in the MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest platform. The vectorization of maps is extremely expensive and impractical for the whole territory. The recommended solution, if you want to work with vectors, is to download the data, make the territorial or spatial cut of your interest and then vectorize with your favorite software.

  • Is the MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest data public?

    Yes, the MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest data is public and free for non-commercial use or for public interest purposes.

  • Is it possible to work with MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest data in the cloud without having to download them?

    Yes, the MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest collections are available as layers in the Google Earth Engine platform and can be accessed, processed and analyzed directly on the platform without the need to download the data. To obtain the IDs of the MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest collection in the Google Earth Engine, go to:  LINK

  • How can I access the MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest data in Google Earth Engine?

    It is necessary to have an account in Google Earth Engine (GEE), which can be registered through the following link: https://earthengine.google.com

    By accessing the GEE Code Editor (https://code.earthengine.google.com) you can launch scripts to view and process data. In the link you will find examples of scripts to access the Trinational Atlantic Forest MapBiomas data in Google Earth Engine. LINK

  • How can I cite the Trinational Atlantic Forest MapBiomas data?

    The MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest is public and free, simply referring to the source in the following format:

    The MapBiomas  Trinational Atlantic Forest data are public, open and free under Creative Commons CC-CY-SA license and by referencing the source observing the following format:

    “MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest Project – Collection [number] of the Annual Coverage and Land Use Series, acquired 2023 through the link: [LINK]“

    “Project Trinational Atlantic Forest – is a multi-institutional initiative that produces annual maps of land cover and land use from automatic classification processes applied to satellite images.” The full description of the project can be found at  bosqueatlantico.mapbiomas.org”.

  • Where can I find the description of the legend and raster code?

    The detailed description of the legend with its corresponding code (raster) is available for download at: https://bosqueatlantico.mapbiomas.org/codigos-de-la-leyenda

  • Can I download the coverage and land use statistics data? For which territorial subset?

    Yes, the land cover and use statistics, as well as the transition matrices for the Trinational Atlantic Forest biome, country, basin, province / state, departments and municipalities / districts are available for download at: https://bosqueatlantico.mapbiomas.org/estadisticas/

  • How can I download the maps of a province or municipality?

    On the MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest platform, the maps are available to download by country. To download by province or municipalities, they can be generated with Google Earth Engine, accessing the script (scripts) available at the link. You must select the province and municipality and the years of interest and export it to your Google Drive folder.

  • How is the raster data area calculated in MapBiomas Trinational Atlantic Forest?

    Landsat tiene una resolución promedio de 30 m, por lo que es común asociar el área de un píxel a 900 m2. Pero, dado que los datos originales de MapBiomas Bosque Atlántico Trinacional se crean siguiendo la representación del estándar GEE (Lat/Long y WGS84), no utiliza una proyección equivalente (equal area). Por lo tanto, la distancia desde el objetivo hasta la línea del Ecuador influye en el tamaño del píxel. Por lo tanto, a escala continental, se debe evitar el cálculo del conteo de píxeles y la multiplicación por 900 m2.

    En MapBiomas Bosque Atlántico Trinacional el cálculo se realiza en Google Earth Engine, aplicamos la función ee.Image.pixelArea () que genera una imagen en la que el valor de cada píxel es el área de ese píxel en metros cuadrados, teniendo en cuenta las posibles distorsiones cartográficas.

  • What maps were used as a reference for the mapping?

    You can access the description of all the reference maps used by MapBiomas Trinacional Atlantic Forest at: Reference Maps.