Improved woodland monitoring and enforcement contributed to significant declines in Brazil’s Amazon deforestation rate in recent years, experts say. But economic conditions also influence the pace of land clearing, and analysts cite these as the reason why new data show Amazon deforestation back on the rise. Brazil’s Amazon region lost an estimated 5,831 square kilometers (2,251 square miles) of forest in the year ending July 31, according to preliminary figures issued late last month by the government’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). That’s 16% more than the 5,012 square kilometers (1,935 sq mi) of Amazon woodland cleared in the previous 12 months, INPE says. (Definitive deforestation figures for the former period won’t be released until mid-2016, but the agency expects them to be... [Log in to read more]