Amazon Deforestation and Land Use Emissions: Annual Relationships with Hydroclimate and Agricultural Value Added

Forest loss in the Amazon links land conversion to carbon emissions and may alter the climatic conditions that support agriculture. This study examines how these relationships unfold within and across years using regional observations for 1990–2023. Exploratory analyses and a Bayesian vector autoregression relate deforestation, temperature, precipitation, gross land use emissions, and agricultural value added, accounting for Pacific and Atlantic climate variability and a linear trend. Deforestation and emissions remain grouped after removing trends, whereas the broader climatic and agricultural groupings change. Changes in deforestation and emissions are positively associated within the same year: a one standard deviation unexpected increase in annual deforestation change corresponds to an estimated emissions change response of 115.87 million tCO2e (95% credible interval: 56.33–192.20 million). Subsequent responses are too uncertain to establish how long this association persists. Temperature, precipitation, and agricultural responses also remain imprecisely estimated. The principal contribution is an integrated assessment distinguishing detectable annual forest loss–inventory co-movement from unresolved later hydroclimatic and agricultural responses. Related land change inputs in the emissions inventory limit the independence of the carbon finding. These results support joint monitoring of forest loss and gross emissions, complemented by spatial and seasonal indicators of climatic regulation and agricultural vulnerability.