Satellite images of Africa's Congo Basin reveal that deforestation has fallen by about a third since 2000. 

 

Researchers believe this is partly because of a focus on mining and oil rather than commercial agriculture, where swathes（带子，绷带） of forest are cleared.

 

The work is published in the Philosophical¹ Transactions of the Royal Society B.

 

It is part of a series that is examining the state of Africa's forests.

 

Dr Simon Lewis, from the University of Leeds and University College London, said: "Most of the focus has been on the Amazon and on South East Asian tropical rainforests, and a big bit of the missing picture is what is going on the Congo Basin in Central Africa. 

 

"We really wanted to pull together information about this amazing region that we know very little about."

 

 

Sprawling² across the heart of Africa, the Congo Basin rainforest is second only to the Amazon in size. It covers nearly 2 million sq km.

 

This latest study reveals that it is in far better health than expected.

 

Images taken from space allowed researchers to track how the dense³ foliage⁴（植物，叶子） was changing over time.

 

They found that during the 1990s nearly 3,000 sq km of forest were being felled each year.

 

But from 2000 to 2010, the rate of deforestation had slowed. Fewer than 2,000 sq km of rainforest were lost every year. 

 

"The results were surprising," Dr Lewis told BBC News. 

 

"This is partly because there is a network of protected areas. But it is also because of a lack of expansion from agriculture, and the way these [central African] countries have organised their economies. 

 

"They are very dependent on oil sales and also minerals from mining, and they are investing in that and not investing so much in agricultural expansion."

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