Following a four-year decline, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased sharply in the year ending July 31, 2013, consuming 28% more land than in the previous 12 months, according to preliminary figures from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

The estimated 2,256 square miles (5,843 square kilometers) of forest cleared during the period is equivalent in size to the land area of Delaware, but nonetheless ranks as the second smallest amount of deforestation on record since the government started measuring Amazon deforestation, in 1988.

Since then, over 18% of the Amazon has been cleared. The smallest loss—1,765 sq. miles (4,571 sq. kms)—occurred in the year ending July 31, 2012.

Three of Brazil’s nine Amazon states—Mato Grosso, a big soy bean producer; Pará, the center of Brazilian cattle ranching and where an Amazon highway is also being paved; and Rondônia, a cattle ranching region where two big Amazon dams are being built—accounted for 76% of the latest forest-clearing total. Their deforestation rose by 52%, 37% and 21%, respectively, over the year-earlier period.

“The spike in deforestation in Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia states is being fueled, in part, by high international soy and beef prices,” says Paulo Barreto, senior researcher at The Institute of Man and the Amazon Environment (Imazon), an Amazon nonprofit that monitors deforestation. “The paving of a long, [1,174-kilometer] stretch of a major Amazon highway in Pará state, and the building of two big dams in Rondônia state are also acting as corridors of colonization, which is also fueling greater deforestation in those two states.”

Says Dalton Valeriano, Coordinator of the Amazon Program at INPE: “What’s causing Amazon deforestation to increase in Pará and Rondônia states, besides high international commodity prices, are [the] big infrastructure projects. Satellite images showed that in Pará state, much of the recent increase in deforestation [in the year ending July 31, 2013] was in federally unprotected areas on either side of the BR-163 highway [now being paved], where land grabbers are slashing and burning and selling [property] to cattle ranchers, using forged land claims.”

Adds Valeriano: “Satellite images show that in Rondônia state, construction of two big hydro plants, the [3,330-megawatt] Jirau and [3,160-megawatt] Santo Antônio dams, are attracting ... an influx of workers, many of whom settle there and clear areas illegally.”

Some critics of the government also link the deforestation uptick to last year’s overhaul of the country’s Forest Code. Specifically, they cite provisions giving amnesty in certain cases to land owners who had cleared their land illegally. The amnesty, says Barreto, “sent a message that they could continue to [deforest] with impunity.”

Challenges of the new Forest Code’s amnesty provisions are pending in Brazil’s Supreme Court. (See “Brazil high court asked to review forest code”—EcoAméricas, Jan. ’13).

Although INPE will not issue final figures for the deforestation rate ending in July 2103 until April or May of next year, the agency’s preliminary figures usually are close to the definitive ones because both are based on high-resolution satellite images.

To arrive at the final figure, INPE analyzes more of these images. INPE’s Valeriano says there was only a 2% difference between the preliminary and final Amazon deforestation rates for the period ending July 31, 2012.