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The Brazilian Amazon contains about 40% of the world's remaining tropical rainforest and plays vital roles in maintaining biodiversity, regional hydrology and climate, and terrestrial carbon storage (1). It also has the world's highest absolute rate of forest destruction, currently averaging nearly 2 million hectares per year (2).

This rapid pace of deforestation has several causes. First, nonindigenous populations in the Brazilian Amazon have increased tenfold since the 1960s, from about 2 million to 20 million people, as a result of immigration from other areas of Brazil and high rates of intrinsic growth (3). Second, industrial logging and mining are growing dramatically in importance, and road networks are expanding that sharply increase access to forests for ranchers and colonists. Third, the spatial patterns of forest loss are changing; past deforestation has been concentrated along the densely populated eastern and …