Abstract We estimate changes in forest cover (deforestation and forest regrowth) in the tropics for the two last decades (1990–2000 and 2000–2010) based on a sample of 4000 units of 10 910 km size. Forest cover is interpreted from satellite imagery at 30 9 30 m resolution. Forest cover changes are then combined with pan-tropical biomass maps to estimate carbon losses. We show that there wa…