Deforestation data opened up by the Peruvian government shows that the rate of forest clearing has slowed in recent years, though Peru's Amazon has lost more than 100,000 hectares annually since 2005. Overall, the area has gone from 80 to 78 percent forested from 2000. Peru's monitoring system, in development since 2009, is based mostly on satellite imagery and can detect changes as small as .09 hectares. "This is a big deal," said Greg Asner, a research at the Carnegie Institution for Science who has been working on the project. "The Peruvian government is making their first estimates of deforestation available online for others to view. Perhaps more countries will install their own high-resolution mapping teams and make the results as transparent as Peru has done here." The system will help Peru move forward on its REDD+ program. For the full story, see http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0613-peru-deforestation-tracking-system.html.