Earth Has Lost Almost 6 Californias’ Worth of Forest Since 2000

Take a look: This is deforestation’s footprint from 2000 to 2012, according to a new study of 650,000 high-resolution satellite images.

The world lost the trees on some 2.3 million square kilometers (0.9 million square miles) of land, while trees grew back or were planted on roughly 0.8 million square kilometers. Here’s what those total land areas would look like in both the U.S. and Europe:

Deforestation at this scale is having a tremendous ecological impact on both species and climate. From 2000 to 2011, deforestation effectively added 16 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere, about 13% of the world’s total contribution to climate change. Read more…

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