Researchers observed the global changes in forest coverage between the years of 2000 and 2012
"Tracking changes in the world's forests is critical because forests have direct impacts on local and national economies, on climate and local weather, and on wildlife and clean water," Anne Castle, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science, said in a U.S. Geological Survey news release. "This fresh view of recent changes in the world's forests is thorough, objective, visually compelling, and vitally important."
The team looked at 650,000 scenes images from the Landsat 7 satellite in order to achieve a global perspective on forest decline.
Over the course of the 12 years forests are believed to have lost 888,000 square miles of coverage, which is "roughly the land area of the U.S. states east of the Mississippi River." Global forests also gained 309,000 square miles of coverage, which is about the size of Texas and Louisiana combined.
Russia is believed to have suffered the most dramatic overall forest loss, and a close runner-up was Brazil. Malaysia, Cambodia, Cote d'Ivoire, Tanzania, Argentina and Paraguay had the most forest degradation proportionately. Indonesia experienced the greatest acceleration of forest coverage loss, which nearly doubled over the time period.
In the U.S., the most notable forest change took place in the southeastern states; where cyclic trees are routinely harvested and replaced. Over 30 percent of the forest in this area was either chopped down or regrown over the course of the study.
Humans play a huge role in global forest changes, but other factors can also affect it such as: "wildfire, windstorms, insect infestations, and regrowth of abandoned agricultural areas."
"Ever since the USGS made Landsat data free to anyone in 2008, Landsat imagery has served as a reliable common record, a shared vocabulary of trusted data about Earth conditions," Castle said. "It's been said that the free data policy is like giving every person on the globe a free library card to the world's best library on Earth observations."
"With the free data policy, we have seen a remarkable revolution in the use of Landsat for documenting the changes in the Earth's land cover," Tom Loveland, chief scientist at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center and a co-author of the study. "This multi-organization project was only feasible with the existence of free Landsat data. The invaluable Landsat archive supplies high-quality, long-term, consistent global data at a scale appropriate for tracking forest gains and losses.
Google Maps aided in the creation of the project.
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