A new system for mapping destruction of Brazil's Amazon rainforest is reporting a surge in areas that have been partially cut but not yet cleared, according to AP. Brazil's National Institute for Space Research said the system shows that an area roughly the size of Belize or the state of Vermont was partially knocked down this year. The institute tracked 24,932 square kilometers (9,600 square miles) of partially decimated forest this year, up 67 percent from 14,915 square kilometers (5,750 square miles) in 2007, according to statistics available Friday on its Web site. That's also twice the size of zones that were clearcut during the last 12 months on record. Scientists say the new system for tracking areas in the process of being destroyed can better alert the government to locales needing urgent policing. Previously Brazil's government concentrated on monitoring areas completely denuded of trees. «It is much more likely that the clearcut will occur in areas that have already been degraded than in areas where the forest is intact,» the director of the space research institute, Gilberto Camara, told the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper today.
