Amazon deforestation speeds up: Brazil space agencyDeforestation deforestation Process of clearing forests. Rates of deforestation are particularly high in the tropics, where the poor quality of the soil has led to the practice of routine clear-cutting to make new soil available for agricultural use. in Brazil's Amazon rainforest in June was four times more devastating dev·as·tate tr.v. dev·as·tat·ed, dev·as·tat·ing, dev·as·tates 1. To lay waste; destroy. 2. To overwhelm; confound; stun: was devastated by the rude remark. than the month before, further depleting what is seen as one of the biggest buffers against global warming, official data revealed Tuesday. Satellite imagery analyzed by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research showed 578 square kilometers (223 square miles) of Amazon woodland was burned or cut down. That was more than four times the devastation recorded in May, and roughly equivalent to the size of Switzerland's Lake Geneva Geneva, canton and city, Switzerland Geneva (jənē`və), Fr. Genève, canton (1990 pop. 373,019), 109 sq mi (282 sq km), SW Switzerland, surrounding the southwest tip of the Lake of Geneva. , or half the area of California's biggest city of Los Angeles
Most of the destruction was concentrated in the Brazilian states of Para and Mato Grosso. Ranchers and farmers regularly encroach encroach v. to build a structure which is in whole or in part across the property line of another's real property. This may occur due to incorrect surveys, guesses or miscalculations by builders and/or owners when erecting a building. on the vast zone. Between July 2008 and June 2009, more than 4,700 square kilometers of Amazon jungle has disappeared, according to the space agency's imagery. Brazil last December vowed to slow the rate of deforestation in the Amazon, the world's biggest tropical woodland, by 70 percent over a decade. 
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