The World Lost an Oklahoma-Sized Area of Forest In 2013, Satellite Data Show

merbs writes Oklahoma spans an area in the American South that stretches across almost 70,000 square miles. That's almost exactly the same area of global forest cover that was lost in a single year. High resolution maps from Global Forest Watch, tapping new data from a partnership between the University of Maryland and Google, show that 18 million hectares (69,500 square miles) of tree cover were lost from wildfires, deforestation, and development the year before last. The maps were created by synthesizing 400,000 satellite images collected by NASA's Landsat mission.

Comments

Re:Which is it? Very different cases.

[flaming error]

RTFA:
"The World Resource Institute, which coordinates Global Forest Watch, notes that the loss is both of the permanent, human-driven varietyâ"razing for agriculture and developmentâ"and the cyclical; from fires, logging, harvesting, and natural tree death. In the case of the latter, forests can take decades to be restored. In the former, they are gone for good"

This map is highly suspect

[Karmashock]

I live near some of this area. There has been no fire or logging in the area and yet it is marked pink.

I'm also seeing a lot of areas that are pink that don't seem very likely to be involved in logging or forest fires. I mean, look at rural alaska.

Re:Oklahoma, as an example

[istartedi]

The USA in general has more forest now then it did 100 years ago. The first industrial revolution was really hard on trees. For example, In NorCal there is a town called Guerneville. Next to the Safeway you can read a historical marker that explains it was once called "stumptown". Reason? Redwoods cut down to make railroad ties and other structures. Guerneville is now surrounded by 2nd growth redwood. It looks great, even if you know that it's not the amazing beauty that it must have been before.