Forest Area Percentage of Land Area

Deforestation takes place in many forms — wildfires, agricultural clearance, and logging for timber. Forests cover 31% of Earth's land area, yet according to the WWF, around 75,700 square kilometers (18.7 million acres) are lost every year. This makes deforestation one of the largest sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide and a significant driver of climate change.

This interactive map shows forest area as a percentage of land area for most of the world's countries from 1990 to the most recently available year. The animation below gives an overview of how forest cover has changed over that period — open the interactive version to explore individual countries in more detail.

The underlying data comes from the Food and Agriculture Organization and is published on the World Bank website, where it is described as:

Statistical Concept and Methodology: Forest is determined both by the presence of trees and the absence of other predominant land uses. The trees should reach a minimum height of 5 meters in situ. Areas under reforestation that have not yet reached but are expected to reach a canopy cover of 10 percent and a tree height of 5 meters are included, as are temporarily unstocked areas, resulting from human intervention or natural causes, which are expected to regenerate. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provides detail information on forest cover, and adjusted estimates of forest cover. The survey uses a uniform definition of forest. Although FAO provides a breakdown of forest cover between natural forest and plantation for developing countries, forest data used to derive this indicator data does not reflect that breakdown. Total land area does not include inland water bodies such as major rivers and lakes. Variations from year to year may be due to updated or revised data rather than to change in area. The indicator is derived by dividing total area under forest of a country by country's total land area, and multiplying by 100.