Trees cover a majority of the Earth's Surface area and are home to millions of species. Despite feeling insignificant alone, each tree plays a vital role in the environment!
Today there are over 60,000 estimated species of trees that exist in the world! Animals are often the primary inhabitant of trees, such as Woodpeckers or Owls!
Trees are a major contributing factor to a healthy ecosystem. This article will visualize how deforestation has changed around the world, and the outcomes as a result of. There are many everyday activities that are impacted by the presence of these natural components, such as the conversion of carbon dioxide into oxygen! More on that topic below.
Over the past few decades, data has shown that the overall land occupation of forests around all parts of the world has underwent major
change. Recorded estimates claim that the average net change in forest area from 2000-2020 over all regions is 10.484%. However, this does not account for
factors such as global area cover, or population density!
Contrastively, the average net change in forest area of the
There are many factors that lead to loss of forest cover. According to the Global Forest Watch in 2024, commonly reported drivers included logging, hard commodities, permanent agriculture, settlements and infrastructure, shifting cultivation, wildfires, and other natural disturbances.
The single most potent contributor to deforestation in 2024 was wilfires, a natural disaster responsible for almost 14 million hectares of forest damage.
Agriculture on the other hand, is responsible for almost 7 million hectares of deforestation globally.
Lastly, logging contributed another 5.25 million hectares in damages.
One of the previously mentioned factors which contributed significantly to deforestation was farming and agriculture. Pendra et al. (2019), measured the carbon dioxide (Co2) emissions per capita of several countries. According to the data in the year 2013,
What about other living inhabitants? How does the biodiversity get affected by deforestation? According to the Global Living Planet index, which measures the diversity and abundance of living beings in a given region, there have been significant changes in animal populations since its initial conception, strongly linked with habitat loss related to deforestation. Between the year 1970 and 2020, the majority of continents has seen a decrease, with some anomalies such as the year 1990, which featured a major spike in (some region).
However overall, there was a noticeable decrease in recorded LPI across all the (named regions).