How Close Are We to the Amazon’s Tipping Point? New MAAP Report Reveals 15% of the Amazon’s Original Forest Lost, Flying River Routes to the Southwest Are Most Affected
October 20, 2026
Amazon Conservation’s latest analysis finds that 97 million hectares (240 million acres) of primary forest have been lost – an area the size of Texas and California combined – and that the moisture pathways that forests depend on during the dry and transition seasons are the most disrupted.
A new report from Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (MAAP) finds that 15% of the Amazon basin’s original primary forest is already gone, and that the losses are concentrated along the moisture routes some regions depend on most.
The report, MAAP #250: Amazon Tipping Point – Where Are We? (2026 Update), estimates that 97.06 million hectares (240 million acres) of primary forest have been lost across the Amazon biome’s nine countries through the end of 2025, mainly due to human-caused deforestation and fires. Total forest loss rose from 13.2% in 2021, as estimated in Amazon Conservation’s first assessment (MAAP #164), to 15% through 2025. Between 2022 and 2025 alone, an additional 13.04 million hectares (32.2 million acres) of primary forest were lost, an area nearly 15 times the size of Yellowstone National Park. This includes record-breaking losses due to fire in 2024, following the 2023’s strong El Niño season (MAAP #229). This additional loss of primary forest brings the Amazon closer to its tipping point, which scientific literature suggests could be triggered at around 25% forest loss, in combination with climate change impacts.
The analysis also breaks down forest loss along the Amazon’s seasonal flying rivers. It finds that the pathways carrying moisture during the dry and transition seasons have lost nearly three times more forest than the wet-season pathway. These pathways sustain forests in the southwestern Amazon, in Peru and Bolivia, where more than 70% of rainfall depends on moisture recycled by forests across the Basin.
These findings take on added urgency ahead of the very strong El Niño forecast expected to intensify for late 2026. MAAP #248 suggests that El Niño may disrupt the Amazon’s wet-season moisture flow, extending the dry and transition seasons and increasing the risk of forest fires. These are the same regions whose moisture pathways MAAP #250 finds are already the most deforested.
Matt Finer, Director of MAAP & Senior Research Specialists highlights that “media reports often indicate in general terms that the Amazon is approaching a tipping point, but here is actual data indicating the magnitude of the problem. With 15% of the original Amazon primary forests lost to deforestation and fires, we are approaching the point at which the flying rivers that sustain rainforests may be disrupted.”
Why monitoring the Amazon’s tipping point matters
The Amazon’s tipping point hypothesis holds that parts of the rainforest could shift toward drier savanna ecosystems as deforestation and climate change disrupt rainfall patterns and intensify dry seasons. Scientific literature suggests that this transition could be triggered when around 25% of the forest is lost alongside climate change impacts. However, this threshold is not definitive, the changes may be gradual and piecemeal, and the risk may vary considerably across the Amazon.
MAAP’s 2022 deforestation assessment helped illustrate this geographic variation. While an estimated 13.2% of the original Amazon biome forest had been lost at the time, loss in the eastern third of the biome was already approximately 30.8%, exceeding the hypothesized 25% threshold. In comparison, the central third had lost 10.8% and the western third 6.3%. This finding highlighted the importance of monitoring not only total forest loss, but also where it occurs in relation to the Amazon’s interconnected hydrological system. The Amazon generates around half of its own rainfall, recycling moisture up to six times through atmospheric flows known as flying rivers.
Flying Rivers Connect Forest Loss in the East to Rainfall in the West
Flying rivers carry moisture from the Atlantic Ocean westward across the Amazon. Trees are a crucial part of this cycle: they draw water from the soil and release it back into the atmosphere as water vapor, helping sustain rainfall all the way to the Andes.
This connection means that deforestation in one region can have consequences beyond its immediate area. When the forests that help sustain these moisture flows are cleared, the amount of moisture reaching downwind regions may be reduced, potentially threatening ecosystems that depend on recycled rainfall. For this reason, the Amazon’s tipping point is unlikely to be a single, uniform event. Instead, it may unfold gradually, over decades rather than abruptly, and differently across regions, with some areas affected sooner and more severely than others.
In MAAP #232 (2025) and the subsequent white paper, Keeping the flying river flowing: How deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon threatens rainfall in Peru and Bolivia (2026), researchers examined these connections in greater detail. They identified the southwestern Amazon (primarily Peru and Bolivia) as particularly vulnerable and found that these connections change with the seasons. During the dry and transition seasons, the moisture that reaches this region crosses the eastern and central Brazilian Amazon, including heavily deforested areas of Brazil’s southern Pará region.
The 2026 Update Features a Seasonal Perspective
MAAP #250 brings these two lines of research together, applying its updated forest-loss estimates through 2025 to the three seasonal pathways identified in MAAP #232. The results show a clear contrast between seasons. The wet season pathway, which crosses relatively continuous and well-protected forests in the northern Amazon, remains comparatively intact, with just 3.2% forest loss. In contrast, the pathways active during the transition and dry seasons have lost 9.1% and 8.6% of their forest, respectively, nearly three times more. These findings are particularly relevant for the southwestern Amazon, where forest-driven moisture recycling plays an important role in sustaining rainforest ecosystems during the dry and transition seasons.
The update uses the same baseline developed for MAAP #164: a reconstruction of the Amazon’s original forest before European colonization, estimated at 647.6 million hectares (1.6 billion acres). Of the 97.06 million hectares lost, 84.28 million were due to deforestation and other non-fire causes, including natural events such as landslides and windstorms, and 12.78 million to fire. Brazil accounts for the largest share of total loss (79.4%), followed by Bolivia (6.2%), Peru (5.8%), and Colombia (4.5%). Bolivia now ranks second, up from fourth in the 2022 assessment.
Together, our MAAP reports and investigations show that understanding the Amazon tipping point requires more than a single estimate of forest loss. Monitoring where deforestation occurs, how it intersects with seasonal moisture pathways, and which regions depend most on recycled rainfall can help identify areas of heightened vulnerability and inform conservation priorities. As pressures from deforestation, fires, and climate change continue, it is essential to start looking at the Amazon as an interconnected system rather than as isolated forests. A connected forest calls for connected science and conservation.
Read the full report: MAAP #250: Amazon Tipping Point – Where Are We? (2026 Update)
Additional resources:
MAAP #164: Amazon Tipping Point – Where Are We?
MAAP #229: Amazon Deforestation & Fire Hotspots 2024
MAAP #248: Implications of upcoming major El Niño event on Amazon fires
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