Putting landless cattle on the map!
Aerial view of an industrialized cattle feedlot, illustrating intensified production systems studied in South America’s dry diagonal.New paper out in Environmental Research Letters on mapping cattle intensification from space across South America’s dry diagonal.
We use satellite imagery and active learning to map where cattle are confined—a sign of intensified production—across South America’s 3.7 million km² dry diagonal. We identify thousands of feedlots, concentrated animal feeding operations, and supplementary feeding sites, revealing that confinement-based cattle production is widespread. We reveal that feedlots are mainly found in cropland-rich, low-deforestation areas, while supplementary feeding sites are linked to higher deforestation. Our approach accurately distinguishes these systems, offering new insights into the geography of ranching intensification, its environmental impacts, and its connection to deforestation.
Take a look at the interactive webmap to explore the distribution of feedlots, concentrated animal feeding operations, and supplementary feeding sites across South America’s dry diagonal.
See the full paper here: Tobias Kuemmerle, Pedro D Fernández, Matthias Baumann and Jamie Burton (2025). Uncovering patterns of cattle intensification across South America’s dry diagonal. Environmental Research Letters, 20, 074004.