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. Nicolas-Jacques Cont, an officer in Napoleon's army, invented the modern pencil by combining graphite and clay for lead durability. This is true for some problems, such as climate change. In the map we see the net deforestation embedded in trade for each country. They first lose lots of forest, but reach a turning point and begin to regain it again. But there are real reasons to believe that this century doesnt have to replicate the destruction of the last one. How many trees are cut down each year? Environmental Research Letters, 7(4), 044009. A study published on September 2, 2015 in the journal Nature suggests these answers: 3 trillion and 15.3 billion. 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. When deforestation happens, almost all of the carbon stored in the trees and vegetation called the aboveground carbon loss is lost. The number of trees cut down in the Brazilian Amazon in January far exceeded deforestation for the same month last year, according to government satellite data. Thats a lot of trees! This is measured in hectares, which is equivalent to 10,000 m. In a related post we have combined this FAO data with global deforestation rates from Williams (2003) to document forest change over the last 300 years this gives us data on forest change from 1700 onwards. Thats one football field of forest lost every single second around the clock. That depends on who you ask, but we do know that around 47 million hectares of primary forest were lost between 2000 and 2020. But by studying how forests have changed over time, theres good reason to think that a way forward is possible. Hosonuma et al. The research says 15.3 billion trees are chopped down every year. 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. Countries that lie along this line would have a net-neutral impact on global forests: the area they are causing to deforestation overseas is exactly as large as the area they are regrowing at home. Note that this only measures the emissions from tropical deforestation it doesnt include any other emissions from agricultural production, such as methane from livestock, or rice, or the use of fertilizers. Most emissions 71% came from foods consumed in the country that they were produced. Our World in Data is free and accessible for everyone. The world loses almost six million hectares of forest each year to deforestation. In the chart we see how the cover of the earths surface has changed over the past 10,000 years. Global deforestation peaked in the 1980s. Forests, biodiversity and people. Deforestation was therefore responsible for [2.6 / 40.2 * 100 = 6.5%]. Not all forest is equal. The amount of land used for agriculture land to grow crops as well as grazing land for livestock was expanding. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited. The relationships of population and forest trends. 38. Healthy communities: Tree-filled neighborhoods lower levels of domestic violence and are safer and more sociable. Our crop yields improve and so we need less land for agriculture. As to the number of trees this represents, its impossible to get an accurate count. Forest loss measures the net change in forest cover: the loss in forests due to deforestation plus any expansion of forest through afforestation.6. Since three-quarters of tropical deforestation is driven by agriculture, thats a valid concern. Pendrill, F., Persson, U. M., Godar, J., & Kastner, T. (2019). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 361(1465), 195-210. To investigate this question, researchers Florence Pendrill et al. Forest cover falls quickly, and the annual loss of forest is high. Across Africa, fuelwood and charcoal played a much larger role it accounted for more than half (52%). The total cut down so far is over 470 million trees since January 1st. All the software and code that we write is open source and made available via GitHub under the permissive MIT license. Philipp Curtis and colleagues make this point clear. Agricultural and forestry trade drives large share of tropical deforestation emissions. Humanitys biggest footprint is due to what we eat, not where we live. How many trees are chopped down for Christmas? The rate of forest loss changed a lot. 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. As we saw previously, this deforestation accounts for around one-quarter of global forest loss. In the article we will look at the reasons we lose forest; how these can be differentiated in a useful way; and what this means for understanding our priorities in tackling forest loss. Over the decade since 2010, the net loss in forests globally was 4.7 million hectares per year.1 However, deforestation rates were much significantly higher. Nature, 536(7615), 143. (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. 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. But international markets alone cannot fix this problem. We see this in the chart. Stage 3 The Late Transition phase is when deforestation rates start to slow down again. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the worlds land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. (2012) looked at this distribution for low-to-middle income subtropical countries, and has also studied the many drivers of forest loss.Hosonuma, N., Herold, M., De Sy, V., De Fries, R. S., Brockhaus, M., Verchot, L., & Romijn, E. (2012). 79% of exported deforestation ended up in those countries that had stopped losing domestic forests. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution. Noriko Hosonuma et al. From this understanding we can define five reasons why we lose forests: Thanks to satellite imagery, we can get a birds-eye view of what these drivers look like from above. But we also see that some countries which import a lot of food have high emissions. The 11-month balance shows that 1,539,970 trees were cut down each day, which means 1,059 trees per minute or almost 18 trees per second. This emphasises two important points. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. The consumption choices of people in these countries cause deforestation elsewhere in the world. 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.) Web3.5 billion to 7 billion trees are cut down per year. Forests are mainly cut and burned to make space for local, subsistence agriculture or for fuelwood for energy. Then things started to speed up. 14% of deforestation is driven by consumers in the worlds richest countries we import beef, vegetable oils, cocoa, coffee and paper that has been produced on deforested land.12. This interactive map shows deforestation rates across the world. To put this in perspective, that would be around one-sixth of the total carbon footprint of the average EU diet.36. Our World In Data is a project of the Global Change Data Lab, a registered charity in England and Wales (Charity Number 1186433). How many trees are lost to deforestation each year? However, most align on the relative change in forests over this period. 71% of this is driven by demand in domestic markets, and the remaining 29% for the production of products that are traded. Thats both an economic and environmental win. How many trees are cut down each year?. How many trees have been cut down? At the beginning of this phase, the forest area is at its lowest point. When we treat these impacts equally we make it difficult to prioritize our efforts in the fight against deforestation. At this stage, countries are still losing forest each year but at a lower rate than before. (2020). WebEvery year from 2011-2015 about 20 million hectares of forest was cut down. The definition of forest can vary depending on aspects such as tree density and height. The UN FAO estimate that 10 million hectares of forest were cut down each year. Mather refers to an annual loss of less than 0.25% as a small loss. High-income countries were the largest importers of deforestation, accounting for 40% of it. When in history did we lose it? Mather, A. S., Fairbairn, J., & Needle, C. L. (1999). Lets start at the top. (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. A new study published in Nature estimates the planet has 3.04 trillion trees. 2020. From 1700 to 1850, 19 million hectares were being cleared every decade. Mather, A. S. (2004). They cut down their forests and replaced it with agricultural land long ago. The latter will experience short-term environmental impacts, but will ultimately regrow. Deforesting the earth: from prehistory to global crisis. It was predominantly temperate forests that were being lost at this time. For this reason, data sources including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization tend to aggregate annual losses as the average over five-year or decadal periods. They are smaller, and more temporary. The United Nations, as well as experts at the World Wildlife Fund and Global Forest Watch, found that one million animals are in danger of extinction as a result of how much deforestation has occurred. 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. If we sum countries imported deforestation by World Bank income group, we find that high-income countries were responsible for 40% of imported deforestation; upper-middle income for 25%; lower-middle income for 20%; and low income for 5%. But, it would be wrong to think that the only impact rich countries have on global forests is through changes in their domestic forests. On balance, they add to the global forest stock. All of our charts can be embedded in any site. How many trees are cut down each year?. theyre driving deforestation elsewhere; whilst many subtropical countries are partly cutting down trees to meet this demand from rich countries. What are the major impacts of mass deforestation and forest loss? But there is good reason to make this our primary concern. Because people are starting to see how climate change affects trees. The story of both soy and palm oil are complex and its not obvious that eliminating these products will fix the problem. Bringing all of these elements together, we can focus on a few points that should help us prioritise our efforts to end deforestation. But the magnitude of these impacts are often less than the complete conversion of forest. And its not just in forests eitherits also happening on farms, in cities, and on private property. The world has lost one-third of its forest an area twice the size of the United States. (2017) estimate that the average EU diet, excluding deforestation, is responsible for 0.5 tonnes CO2 per person. 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. This is very close to our estimate of a one-third loss. 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. It results in a permanent conversion of forest into an alternative land use. Globally we deforest around ten million hectares of forest every year.11 Thats an area the size of Portugal every year. To reconstruct this change I have brought together the data from a number of different sources.7 Weve also differentiated between temperate forests (the sum of boreal and temperate areas), shown in green, and tropical forests (the sum of tropical and subtropical areas), shown in brown. 95% of this occurs in the tropics. The paths between these end boxes indicate where emissions are being traded the wider the bar, the more emissions are embedded in these products. Increasing human dominance of tropical forests. Cuaresma, J. C., Danylo, O., Fritz, S., McCallum, I., Obersteiner, M., See, L., & Walsh, B. By combining our earlier Sankey diagram, and breakdown of emissions by product, we can see that we can tackle a large share of these emissions through only a few key trade flows. This is because the latter only captures deforestation the replacement of forest with another land use (such as cropland). One of the reasons poorer countries clear forest to make room for farmland is that they achieve low crop yields. Maxwell, S. L., Fuller, R. A., Brooks, T. M., & Watson, J. E. (2016). We lost 150 million hectares an area half the size of India during that decade. Meanwhile, the global population increased by 147% from 3.1 to 7.6 billion.4 This means that agricultural land per person more than halved, from 1.45 to 0.63 hectares. [2] Only 36% of the world's rainforests remain intact. According to the Environmental Paper Network, an estimated 30% of felled trees are used for paper products. Web42 million trees are cut down each day. 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