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Ihave an open issue on this topic. I have a map with small features on it but I want to export the entire map meaning my zoom level has to be like 1:35 000 000. When I do this it does not resolve the small features regardless of the dpi I put in, I just get a high resolution export of jaggedy unresolved features. How do I export the map "fully resolved"?

You will get your map in both a high resolution PNG format, a layered Photoshop file (PSD) or a layered vector file (SVG). With the layered PSD and SVG you will be able, even after having created your map, to alter and modify your map as much as you want.

Beyond the online map editor: To make it as easy as possible for you to design breathtaking maps you get your map as a layered Photoshop file (.psd) or layered vector file (.svg). Every map feature is a separate layer. This way you can modify elements of the map without destroying the layers below.

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The right to modify the map, the right to reproduce the map up to the print circulation that corresponds to the price category you chose, the right to reproduce the map in a downscaled version on your website and the right to transfer these usage rights to a third party (such as your customer).

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Furthermore, monitoring the effectiveness of policy and compliance with legal and voluntary zero-deforestation commitments will need spatially explicit commodity production data. This is now highly relevant because, following prolonged uncertainty about the inclusion of rubber in the EU Deforestation Regulation, a recent trialogue (December 2022) reached agreement to extend the scope of the regulation to also include rubber (a preprint version of this manuscript ( ) formed part of the evidence contributing to the trialogue), a decision adopted by the European Parliament on 19 April 2023. The ability to monitor rubber-related deforestation will be critical for the implementation of this legislation, for similar legislation potentially following in the United Kingdom and USA (for which relevant acts are now restricted to illegal deforestation) and for monitoring various private sector voluntary commitments such as those made under the auspices of the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR).

The colours show the fraction of overall deforestation that occurred in individual countries. Although most deforestation occurred in Indonesia and Thailand and the deforestation trends are similar across countries, the fraction of deforestation occurring in mainland Southeast Asia (mainly Cambodia) has increased over the past decade. The rates of rubber expansion and associated deforestation involve decisions taken by millions of actors and are influenced by complex and interlinked drivers such as national policies and subsidies, prices for other crops and the availability of extension services and infrastructure. However, it is noteworthy that in some countries (for example, Cambodia29 and Vietnam) rates of rubber-related deforestation increased alongside global rubber price increases after 2000 (black line, second y axis; source: International Monetary Fund, accessed at ).

Here we provide high-resolution maps for rubber and associated deforestation between 1993 and 2016 for all Southeast Asia. We show that rubber has led to several million hectares of deforestation and that the global data3,4 now widely used in setting deforestation policies are likely to severely underestimate the scale of the problem. Although very helpful for providing a holistic assessment of the role of agricultural commodities in driving tropical and subtropical deforestation across the globe, these previous and other model-based data are not a substitute for spatially explicit estimates of crop expansion into natural forests31. Our estimates lie several-fold above these data despite covering only Southeast Asia and not, for example, West and Central Africa, where there has been substantial recent rubber expansion, probably driving deforestation24.

The current estimates for deforestation caused by rubber3,4 used for policy considerations in the EU7 and the United Kingdom6 are based on a land balance model11,12. Such models typically allocate total deforestation area to different commodities on the basis of national (or subnational, for example in the case of this model for Brazil and Indonesia) reports of crop expansion11. This can lead to substantial overestimates or underestimates of the role of different crops in driving deforestation31. First, crop expansion statistics are hampered by uncertainties and inconsistent reporting across crops and countries. Second, although the total area of a crop can remain stable, its actual place of occupancy may change31. This is highly relevant to rubber as oil palm has expanded into traditional rubber growing areas43,44, with new compensatory rubber plantations being established elsewhere, for example, in uplands18,30 and often climatically marginal areas16, where they may be associated with deforestation. In fact, the land balance model4 includes a large amount of unattributed deforestation that could not be explained by crop expansion statistics. Our higher rubber deforestation estimates could help to explain some of this unattributed deforestation. In summary, while the use of extrapolation13,14 and model-based11,12 approaches provides some form of estimation for the extent of deforestation due to rubber plantations, we advocate caution in its interpretation. Instead, where available, we argue for the use of results from direct observations of the dynamics of crop production systems (for example, using remotely sensed satellite imagery), thereby greatly increasing the accuracy of deforestation estimates.

Further work is needed to make connections between rubber-driven deforestation and specific supply chains but, in the absence of such information, it should be assumed that main importers of rubber such as the EU are substantially exposed to rubber-related deforestation. In addition, the lack of traceability information at present provides a further argument for the inclusion of rubber in regulatory processes to drive traceability efforts and to provide an opportunity for supply chains to support sustainable production.

In summary, we believe that rubber merits more consideration in policies and processes that aim to reduce commodity-driven deforestation and that it is vitally important to use the best available evidence on the scale of the problem. The issue outlined here for rubber is of fundamental importance in its own right because rubber is responsible for millions of hectares of deforestation. However, we also highlight the wider need to enhance the evidence base available to inform policy decisions and to aid their implementation. There is an opportunity for increased clarity and rigorous quantification of the extent of environmental degradation caused by main cash crops that is increasingly possible using remotely sensed Earth observation.

We designed a new phenology-based methodology to map rubber plantations across Southeast Asia. Unlike evergreen and deciduous tropical forest and most other tree plantations present in the region, rubber plantations shed their leaves during the dry season and subsequently regain their leaves before the onset of the wet season. Whether this is primarily a response to drought or cold stress is the subject of ongoing research58,59 but, particularly in mainland Southeast Asia, the cold and dry seasons coincide, meaning that, here, the lack of mechanistic understanding of this phenological response does not preclude identifying the time window of its occurrence.

In contrast to mainland Southeast Asia, large parts of insular Southeast Asia do receive rainfall during the northeast monsoon with the southwesterly flowing air masses gathering moisture as they pass over the warm sea. Instead, there can be a dry season during the southwest monsoon (May to September) when the air masses reverse and the northeasterly blowing winds bring dry air from the Australian continent60. However, in the equatorial maritime climate the dry season tends to be neither prolonged nor distinctive (Extended Data Fig. 4) and soil moisture can remain stable or at least above critical levels34.

We tracked the first historical deforestation date since 1993 for all rubber plantations mapped in 2021. This was done using the LandTrendr spectral-temporal segmentation algorithm32,75 (a Landsat-based algorithm for the detection of trends in disturbance and recovery). LandTrendr characterizes the history of a Landsat pixel by decomposing the time series into a series of bounded line segments (that is, trends over several years) and identifying the breakpoints between them. These linear segments and breakpoints allow for the detection the greatest pixel-level change (for example, deforestation) and therewith for the identification of the year in which this greatest spectral change occurred (Extended Data Fig. 9).

To explore the potential impacts of rubber and associated deforestation on regional biodiversity we calculated the area of rubber and associated deforestation within KBAs36. KBAs are some of the most critical sites for the conservation of species and habitats globally and hence rubber and deforestation in these areas pose a threat to global biodiversity.

A.A. and Y.W. designed the study. Y.W. devised the computational framework and A.A. and D.Z. provided further support for data analysis. All authors provided feedback and helped shape the analyses. D.Z., H.C., K.H., Y.S., E.W.-T. and J.X. contributed reference ground data. A.A. took the lead in writing the manuscript with input from P.M.H and Y.W. Y.W. took the lead in writing the Methods and producing the figures. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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