argylesock says… It’s hard to believe it, but a detailed worldwide map of forests didn’t exist until now! Now it’s been made. I wish that Dr Hansen and his team hadn’t used the Mercator projection, which can be very misleading. When thinking about forests it’s daft to choose a map which shrinks the Amazon.
Read at :
http://google-latlong.blogspot.be/2013/11/mapping-worlds-deforestation-over-time.html
Mapping the world’s deforestation over time
We’re excited to announce today that, in a collaboration led by Dr. Matthew Hansen at the University of Maryland, we’ve built the first detailed maps of the world’s forests, from 2000-2012, documenting and quantifying forest landscape changes such as fires, tornadoes, disease and logging.
The most significant findings were that the overall rate of tropical deforestation is increasing, and global forests have experienced a net loss of 1.5M sq km during 2000-2012 due to both natural (disturbance) and human causes. That’s a loss of forested land comparable in size to the entire state of Alaska.
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Science on the Land 