Tropical Deforestation Frontier

Forest Frontier

Deforestation rate 4%/yr

Clearing pattern mixed

Reserve enforcement 60%

Reforestation rate 1.5%/yr

Sim speed 1.5 yr/s

Forest cover

–

Biodiversity left

–

Carbon stock

–

Years elapsed

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How it works

Each grid cell holds a continuous canopy-cover value from 0 (bare cleared soil) to 1 (mature forest), visualized both by a growing/shrinking tree and by the ground tint beneath it. Every simulated year, cover is lost to a deforestation pressure and regained through regrowth that needs a nearby seed source (neighboring canopy) to succeed — an isolated cleared patch surrounded by other cleared cells regrows far slower than one at the edge of intact forest.

dCover/dt = −rate · patternWeight(cell) · cover · reserveFactor
           + regrowRate · neighborAvgCover · (1 − cover)

Clearing pattern blends two real drivers documented by satellite monitoring systems like Brazil's PRODES: at 0 it behaves like scattered selective logging (any cell, independent of neighbors); at 1 it behaves like agricultural clear-cutting, where clearing propagates outward from an already-cleared frontier, eating solid blocks.

Reserve enforcement models a protected area or FSC-certified, zero-deforestation-committed concession at the center of the plot (marked by the glowing ring) — higher enforcement multiplies clearing pressure down inside that boundary but leaves the surrounding land unprotected.

Biodiversity follows the species–area relationship S/S₀ = (A/A₀)^z. Fragmented clearing (many small gaps, lots of forest edge) is given a steeper exponent than one solid clear-cut of the same area — mirroring how edge effects make scattered habitat loss disproportionately worse for species than the same area lost in one block.

Carbon stock scales with total remaining canopy cover, standing in for the above-ground biomass carbon a tropical forest plot like this would hold.

Intact canopy Cleared / bare soil Protected reserve

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