What are the major impacts of mass deforestation and forest loss? Time and time again we see examples of countries that have lost massive amounts of forest before reaching a turning point where deforestation not only slows, but forests return. The annual change is now positive. When it comes to the worlds forests, two of the commonly asked questions are How many trees are on Earth? and How many trees are cut down each year? Since there is often year-to-year variability in deforestation or reforestation rates, this is shown as the five-year average. Many countries have much less forest today than they did in the past. The research says 15.3 billion trees are chopped down every year. Why? There are other aspects to consider. Globally we deforest around ten million hectares of forest every year.11 Thats an area the size of Portugal every year. The story of both soy and palm oil are complex and its not obvious that eliminating these products will fix the problem. The trees are not expected to regrow. Its domestic demand, not international trade, that is the main driver of deforestation. Hosonuma et al. Firstly, international trade does play a role in deforestation its responsible for almost one-third of emissions. Then things started to speed up. Forests: this data is primarily sourced from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The researchs results are and an argument for why deforestation is worse than degradation. The grey line marks where the area of domestic regrowth of forests is exactly equal to imported deforestation. That depends on who you ask, but we do know that around 47 million hectares of primary forest were lost between 2000 and 2020. University of Chicago Press.FAO (2020). For example, the average German generated half a tonne (510 kilograms) of CO2 per person from domestic and imported foods. Since international demand is driving one-third of deforestation emissions, we have some opportunity to reduce emissions through global consumers and supply chains. 95% of global deforestation occurs in the tropics. The UK imported 34,000 hectares of deforestation but increased its domestic forests by only 19,000 hectares. Improvements in agricultural productivity tends to both drive and follow economic growth. They are smaller, and more temporary. When it comes to assessing the worlds forests, two questions need to be answered: How many trees are on Earth? and. Deforesting the earth: from prehistory to global crisis. How many trees are lost to deforestation each year? At the end of this stage, countries are approaching the transition point. In China, the biggest driver is demand for oilseeds which is the combination of soy imported from Latin America and palm oil, imported from Indonesia and Malaysia. Mather refers to an annual loss of less than 0.25% as a small loss. Some interesting facts state that every second, 1.5 acres of wood are cut down, Humans have been cutting down trees for millennia. 1000 years ago, 20% of Scotlands land was covered by forest. [1] That's 15.3 billion every year. Each year, an estimated 15 billion trees are cut down around the world. Tropical forests, on aggregate, have also passed peak deforestation in the 1980s the longest of all bars but have not passed the transition to reforestation. Forest loss or tree loss captures two fundamental impacts on forest cover: deforestation and forest degradation. As mentioned above, about 15 billion trees are cut down each year. Carbon emissions from deforestation: are they driven by domestic demand or international trade? Deforestation is the complete removal of trees for the conversion of forest to another land use such as agriculture, mining, or towns and cities. WebEvery year from 2011-2015 about 20 million hectares of forest was cut down. Year-to-year data on forest change comes with several issues: either data at this resolution is not available, or year-to-year changes can be highly variable. Nicolas-Jacques Cont, an officer in Napoleon's army, invented the modern pencil by combining graphite and clay for lead durability. At the beginning of this phase, the forest area is at its lowest point. Brazil, in contrast, caused more deforestation domestically in the production of goods for other countries than it imported from elsewhere. Urbanization, the other driver of deforestation accounts for just 0.6%. As we saw previously, this deforestation accounts for around one-quarter of global forest loss. WebThe United States has more trees today than we had 100 years ago (and a global study even found that the number of trees on Earth is around 3.04 trillion, a much higher number than previously believed.) https://doi.org/10.4060/ca9825en. Clearing of the Brazilian Amazon for pasture and croplands was a major driver of this loss. WebHealthy trees mean: Healthy people: 100 trees remove 53 tons of carbon dioxide and 430 pounds of other air pollutants per year. Our crop yields improve and so we need less land for agriculture. When deforestation happens, almost all of the carbon stored in the trees and vegetation called the aboveground carbon loss is lost. Stage 1 The Pre-Transition phase is defined by having high levels of forest cover and no or only very slow losses over time. This interactive map shows deforestation rates across the world. Americans cut down 15,094,678 Christmas trees in 2017, according to the most recent year of data from the U.S. Agriculture Department. Science Advances, 3(4), e1601047. One of the reasons poorer countries clear forest to make room for farmland is that they achieve low crop yields. According to the Environmental Paper Network, an estimated 30% of felled trees are used for paper products. The world loses almost six million hectares of forest each year to deforestation. Most deforestation today occurs in low-to-middle income countries. (2018), published in Science.20, Commodity-driven deforestation and urbanization are deforestation: the forested land is completely cleared and converted into another land use a farm, mining site, or city. I have reconstructed long-term data using various studies which Ive documented here. Still, more than half of the worlds habitable land was forested. Because people are starting to see how climate change affects trees. Countries below the line such as the UK and Germany are not growing forests fast enough to offset the deforestation theyre creating elsewhere. Is there a forest transition? Science, 349(6250), 827-832. The researchs results are Given the current estimate of the total tree cover on the planet, that could equate to about 0.11% of trees being cut each year. Data on the annual change in domestic forests is sourced from the UN FAOs Forest Resources Assessment. The paths between these end boxes indicate where emissions are being traded the wider the bar, the more emissions are embedded in these products. Thats one football field of forest lost every single second around the clock. According to CNN, each year over 1,000 plants and animal species go extinct due to deforestation and subsequent habitat loss. Today thats just 34%. But this is no longer the case: forest loss across North America and Europe is now the result of harvesting forestry products from tree plantations, or tree loss in wildfires. Nature, 536(7615), 143. Tree density in primary forests varies from 50,000-100,000 trees per square km, so the math would put this number at 3.5 billion to 7 billion trees cut down each year. Global deforestation reached its peak in the 1980s. How many trees are cut down each year?. Why should we care most about tropical deforestation? Estimates vary, but most date the end of the last great ice age to around 11,700 years ago.Kump, L. R., Kasting, J. F., & Crane, R. G. (2004). If poorer countries are cutting down forests to make food for rich consumers, then we should just stop trading these goods. The latter will experience short-term environmental impacts, but will ultimately regrow. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited. Rome. In the United States, thats about 34 million trees cut down each year just for paper. The State of the Worlds Forests 2020. Some interesting facts state that every second, 1.5 acres of wood are cut down, You will notice in the chart that this was not only expanding into previously forested land, but also other land uses such as wild grasslands and shrubbery. Many forests utilize the sustained-yield management, which means that more trees are planted than logged every year. Growing all those trees requires about 19.7 square miles of land. Net importers of deforestation (shown in brown) are countries that contribute more to deforestation in other countries than they do in their home country. There is some bad news, though: that number is likely to increase by 20% by 2023. How many trees does IKEA cut down a This rapid swapping of green for gray is harmful to the people living in these spaces, and it sets cities up for long-term environmental decline, according to the scientists. These countries might have high levels of afforestation at home, but theyre still having a net negative impact on the size of the worlds forests. As we covered in a previous article, 60% of tropical deforestation is driven by beef, soybean and palm oil production. How do these two measures compare? Since then, deforestation rates have steadily declined, to 78 million hectares in the 1990s; 52 million in the early 2000s; and 47 million in the last decade. The rate of deforestation is declining, but we still lost forests at a whopping 10 million hectares per year between 2015-2020. Tree density in primary forests varies from 50,000-100,000 trees per square km, so the math would put this number at 3.5 billion to 7 billion trees cut down each year. (2019) quantified the deforestation embedded in traded goods between countries.30 They did this by calculating the amount of deforestation associated with specific food and forestry products, and combining it with a trade model. WebEvery year from 2011-2015 about 20 million hectares of forest was cut down. In the United States, thats about 34 million trees cut down each year just for paper. The world passed peaked deforestation in the 1980s and it has been on the decline since then we take a look at rates of forest loss since 1700 in our follow-up post. This is very close to our estimate of a one-third loss. Nearly all 95% of this deforestation occurs in the tropics. Many farmers rely on international buyers to earn a living and improve their livelihoods. In the figure we see visual examples from the study of forest loss classification by Philip Curtis et al. Then things started to speed up. Rome. By Georgina Rannard. It also estimates that 46% of the worlds trees have been cleared over the past 12,000 years. [4] Forests cover 4.06 billion hectares (just less than 31%) of Some interesting facts state that every second, 1.5 acres of wood are cut down, The amount of land used for agriculture land to grow crops as well as grazing land for livestock was expanding. Web42 million trees are cut down each day. Over half of the worlds species reside in tropical forests.24 Endemic species are those which only naturally occur in a single country. Since 2016, an average of 28 million hectares have been cut down every year. But it can bridge between deforestation and degradation depending on the timeframe and permanence of these agricultural practices. Many countries have not only ended deforestation, but actually achieved substantial reforestation. The world loses 5 million hectares of forest to deforestation each year. The breakdown of deforestation by region is shown in the chart. Proactive conservation to prevent habitat losses to agricultural expansion. Humans have already destroyed around 46% of the trees on Earth. Most of our future deforestation is going to come from countries in the pre- or early-transition phase. (2012) gathered this data from a range of sources including country submissions as part of their REDD+ readiness activities, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) country profiles, UNFCCC national communications and scientific studies. A new study published in Nature estimates the planet has 3.04 trillion trees. Nicolas-Jacques Cont, an officer in Napoleon's army, invented the modern pencil by combining graphite and clay for lead durability. England is similar: in the late 11th century, 15% of the country was forested, and over the following centuries two-thirds were cut down. Degradation drivers, including logging and especially wildfires can definitely have major impacts on forest health: animal populations decline, trees can die, and CO2 is emitted. We would subtract its deforestation (25,000 hectares) from its reforestation (50,000 hectares) to get 25,000 hectares net gain. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the worlds land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Across temperate forests the world gained 6 million hectares in the last decade. theyre driving deforestation elsewhere; whilst many subtropical countries are partly cutting down trees to meet this demand from rich countries. Rome. It also estimates that 46% of the worlds trees have been cleared over the past 12,000 years. How many trees are cut down each year in the Amazon rainforest? More than 7 million hectares of forest, or 3.5 billion to 7 billion trees, are cut down every year because of deforestation. When it comes to the worlds forests, two of the commonly asked questions are How many trees are on Earth? and How many trees are cut down each year? 95% of the worlds deforestation occurs in the tropics [we look at this breakdown again later]. In the chart we see historical reconstructions of country-level data on the share of land covered by forest (over decades, centuries or even millennia depending on the country). By the 19th century the forest area was reduced to a third of what it once was. The remaining 73% came from the three drivers of forest degradation: logging of forestry products from plantations (26%); shifting, local agriculture (24%); and wildfires (23%). That depends on who you ask, but we do know that around 47 million hectares of primary forest were lost between 2000 and 2020. Thats like losing an area the size of Portugal every two years. The carbon footprint of diets across the EU vary from country-to-country, and estimates vary depending on how much land use change is factored into these figures. In most rich countries, across Europe, North America and East Asia, forest cover is increasing, whilst in many low-to-middle income countries its decreasing. Rudel, T. K. (1998). On the horizontal axis we have time, spanning from 1700 to 2020; on the vertical axis we have the decadal change in forest cover. This is nearly always true of planted forests in temperate regions there, planted forests are long-established and do not replace primary existing forests. All other material, including data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data, is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. If we want to end deforestation we need to understand where and why its happening; where countries are within their transition; and what can be done to accelerate their progress through it. Deforestation and forest degradation are responsible for around 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions. WebThe United States has more trees today than we had 100 years ago (and a global study even found that the number of trees on Earth is around 3.04 trillion, a much higher number than previously believed.) On balance, it would still have a positive impact on the size of global forests; its net contribution would be increasing forest area by 25,000 hectares.32 However, this country might still be causing more damage than this for a couple of reasons. Many people think of environmental concerns as a modern issue: humanitys destruction of nature and ecosystems as a result of very recent population growth and increasing consumption. Countries such as Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are in the early transition phase and are losing forests quickly. We can calculate this increase as [(7.63 billion 3.09 billion) / 3.09 billion * 100 = 147%]. Approximately 3.5 billion to 7 billion trees are being cut each year according to a report referenced on the Rainforest Action Networks website (RAN) and other publications. Trillion trees ultimately regrow UK and Germany are not growing forests fast enough to the! 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