You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh. I don't know about you, but I'll admit that I'd be nowhere without the GPS.

I pull up on my phone every time I get in my car.

Maps are invaluable for so many reasons,

but did you know they're also helping in the fight against deforestation?

In this talk, land reformer Tasso Acevedo reveals how the collaborative mapping initiative

Map Biomas has stitched together 40 years of satellite images into near real-time courtroom-ready evidence, turning Brazil's once-invisible deforestation into bright, undeniable pixels.

It's led to real large-scale results in saving our planet's lungs.

20, 40, 60, 60, 8, 100.

In every second on the last 12 months, almost 20 trees were cut down in the Amazon.

See, deforestation and degradation is a kind of a disaster for the only country in the world that is named after a tree. Brazil is the fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter in the planet,

but different from the top four, the bulk of our emissions do not come from burning fossil fuels.

It actually comes from the way we use the land.

That's 75% of our emissions.

The majority of that results from forests being cutting down.

You see, tropical forests are like the lungs of the Earth.

You heard something like that before, right?

When we cut them down, they essentially exhalate the carbon

that have been stored for over many decades.

And they no longer exist to absorb the carbon

and to maintain the evapot transpiration

that keeps the cooling system of the planet.

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