Global deforestation peaked in the 1980s | Hacker News Reader

Global deforestation peaked in the 1980s

ourworldindata.org

171 points_Microft96 comments

This is somewhat of a misleading headline. Yes, the rate of deforestation may have peaked in 1980s. There is also not very good data on this before 1990s. The estimate of forested areas in the context of our land use distribution are still in decline.

Now this is adjacent but whats more important in my mind is not reflected in any of these data; that is to say that most of the planet's savanna have been completely lost. Savanna are arguably more important than forest due to the sequestration of carbon in-ground systems (as opposed to woody biomass) and the amount of caloric availability they offer to wild animals. They thus support a huge amount of biomass (though not necessarily biofuel, like a forest).

Some of the areas that are being afforested originally would have been savannas but due to biodiversity loss, they succeed directly to forests (no animals to control the spread of trees). By some estimates less than 1% of North American oak savanna still exists today.

Is the savanah really an effective carbon sink, or is this still based on the (recently discredited) humus theory of soil?

Humus stabilizing in soil is the result of mycorhizzae extracting mineral elements from the soil and exchanging that for carbohydrates. The humus theory was that humus is an essential nutrient. If humus theory were true carbon would be removed, not added to soil. That theory was debunked more than 20 y ago.

https://blog.nutri-tech.com.au/mycorrhizal-magic-new-biologi...

Not related. The suspected importance of savanna is more based on biodiversity than soil science. In these biomes, you have comparatively large amounts of animal and insect biomass. You have animals constantly eating the plants. This causes deep rooted plants which can regenerate quickly to dominate as they grow back intermittently. The sequestered carbon is mostly in the plants and animals as opposed to soil. Measuring biomass accumulation below ground is more difficult than above ground (counting trees is pretty easy).

However some land use pattern studies have looked at which areas have historically been savanna normally show overlap with heavy agriculture regions as the soil is so good. In some cases these former oak savannas in the US will have dozens of feet of fertile topsoil. So there's some speculation that the high soil fertility in such biomes is due to compaction from grazing animals, which I guess is not related to the humus theory, but would be a similar idea about how so much carbon can accumulate.

I found a great little link that compares deforestation / reforestation over time for different countries sorted by things like GDP.

https://ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation

As you can see, most wealthy countries have been increasing their forest cover since 1990 (and indeed since the late 1970's though this graph doesn't go back that far). As poorer countries increase their industrial base and means of wealth production, they too will be able to afford to take care of their environments as well as a the West does.

Yes, this is exactly what I was talking about. In the US for example, almost all of our historical savanna has been replaced by forests. The upper midwest used to be mostly oak savana biome but since the advent of afforestation those areas, mostly regrow as forest. This shift seems most related to eradication of native species which were able to maintain a system at certain level of ecological succession. So maybe without wolves, bison, passenger pigeons, (maybe even mastodon) these ecosystems aren't able to regrow and we instead get a much less biodiverse forest. There is some suspicion this has been the case for several hundred years as oral history from native American tribes suggests they at one time overhunted these resources and afterwards took an active hand in managing some of these ecosystems. However since the native Americans never cleared these areas they may have been in a better position to maintain them (mostly via controlled fires) whereas modern Americans are often starting with farm fields.

Anyways yes, afforestation is happening at good clip but much of it is plantation and a lot of the afforested areas were never previously forest. The same is true in other countries from what I have seen. Even India has massive afforestation but most is agroforestry.

A lot still remains to be seen. It's possible that these forests don't make sense as carbon sinks. Savana systems for local agriculture could be more efficient at mitigating carbon emissions. Nearly a third of land is now used for grazing worldwide and much of the output is shipped internationally.

Like many other systems in nature and otherwise, it's very complex. So I'm not so sure the 90's era practice of reducing deforestation to simple arithmetic is constructive in an era where scientific community is pushing to maximize carbon sinks.

Based on the map, this looks like a problem that will be solved with money. The tropical regions are less wealthy than the temperate regions, and probably as they become more wealthy, they will urbanize and improve farming techniques, both of which require less land, which nature is then able to re-capture.

I'd worry that the improved farming techniques will not facilitate a release of land back to wild, but would simply intensify whatever acreage is already farmed + whatever new ground anyone can justify (like anywhere else I'm aware of).

and will produce lower quality food

The total land area used for agriculture has actually decreased in the last few decades in some of the richer and more developed areas.

Europe in general has seen some reforestation and is greener now than 100 years ago (though still much less green than several hundred years ago).

Is that due to more effective farming methods or just due to importing more foods? I have the suspicion that this is a case of patting ourselves on the back similar to our reduction in CO2-emissions that are merely being exported to China.

Maybe you could actually go research this and let us know what you find.

The article says that deforestation peaked 30-40 years ago.

"Global forest loss peaked in the 1980s – losing an area half the size of India. Since then, deforestation has slowed. In fact, many countries have now reversed the long-term trend and transitioned to a net gain of forests, reforestation."

So clearly something is working. A lot of the responses are assuming that deforestation rate of growth is continuing or even accelerating, especially the random remarks attributing deforestation to all sorts of things. The world is on a re-forestation trend, according to the article.

>The world is on a re-forestation trend, according to the article.

Am I misreading something here (either your comment or the article)? My impression here is that total forested land is still decreasing, but the rate of decrease is not increasing.

The first derivative is still negative but the second derivative is positive.

Possibly. Certainly in the US we have regained forest as marginal farmland was allowed to revert to forest or in some cases converted to forest so that now many places that are conservation land wildernesses are forested as opposed to grazing land and farmland.

On the other hand, a growing population means more demand for wood products (for building, for furniture, etc) and the alternative, plastics, are quite problematic.

> On the other hand, a growing population means more demand for wood products

In the US, increased demand can be met with renewable sources of lumber. This has the side benefit of modest carbon sequestration.

Population growth is also slowing, which may actually pose a more serious problem for labor and innovation. Immigration helps, but it won't be enough.

In other areas of the world, the problem is one of economics, as the parent mentioned.

>This has the side benefit of modest carbon sequestration

There is no way that pulling timber out of the forest and converting into a product actually sequesters anything. Hauling the wood out of the forest to the mill likely releases more carbon than is sequestered by the tree in its lifetime.

Your comment doesn't make sense. A tree growing in a tree farm, and being turned into lumber will sequester that carbon until that lumber is burned. I suppose it matters if you're talking about cutting down old growth for lumber, or using old farm land to put a tree farm on.

Their comment is supposing that the energy costs of hauling the tree out of the forest and slicing it into boards / mulch / whatever (given our current logging technology) emits more carbon (from fuel usage and electricity generation) than the tree sequestered during it's lifetime.

This probably not true, considering that for many decades steam powered logging equipment burned wood before coal became the dominant fuel source (and thus able to cut down and process a tree with less energy than we got from a single tree), although many mills were powered by flowing water.

It's the same notion that "PV panels emit an equivalent of 50g of CO2 per kW/h (assuming a 25 year service life)". Even though the panel doesn't emit anything during operation, mining and manufacturing are still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.

The tree itself sequesters carbon, but the carbon output from using the tree is what is produced burning it + getting it ready to burn.

Have you watched the trucks hauling logged trees down the road? They aren't exactly fuel efficient, then you haul that finished product from the mill to the lumber yard, then to the job site. The average tree sequesters 400kg of carbon in 25 years. The average commuter car will produce that in 2 weeks.

As the economy electrifies and the grid decarbonizes this will improves. Electric trucks, electric chainsaws etc. Mills are already electric I assume.

Sounds like there will be a sustained demand for wood products in the future. Maybe we can cut down some trees, and plant new ones in their stead, then repeat as necessary as the market demands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_farm

Unfortunately tree farms are absolutely disastrous when it comes to biodiversity, and biodiversity loss and climate change are not separate problems but deeply intertwined. You cannot solve one and ignore the other. Regular managed forest is better but not good either.

How's that? I could see climate change decreasing biodiversity for sure, but how would decreasing biodiversity lead to climate change?

Nature is the only one capturing CO2 at the moment.

Biodiversity is what nature does. It starts with soil, then small plants, and gradually you get trees. It's very energy efficient, but it's a very slow process.

Industrial monocultives are nothing like that. It's much faster, but it works out of the paths nature has. Usually by emitting CO2 directly, which impacts climate change.

For example, the natural process of building the soil of a forest takes decades of tiny plants and animals living and pooping and dying, while artificial lumber forest soil is brought in trucks, and set in a single season, with fertilizer extracted from a mine (more CO2). The pooping and dying part releases some CO2 as well, but it cannot compare.

On top of that, cultivation tends to take land from wild forests and jungles. So that doubles the effect.

Permaculture is a way to produce food and wood products using methods that mimic what nature does. Give it a look if you are interested in these things.

A tree farm is clearly better than a barren field. I am afraid you're gonna have to post some backup links to the claims you're making here

The GP talked about cutting existing trees and planting tree farms in their stead, which is different from reforestation of barren fields.

While I wish this line of logic were true, generally as corporations improve their techniques, they try to scale up their business and are rarely content with what they have. Sad, but I think true.

Cultural issues are huge here. Back in the 1980s high end construction made great use of tropical hardwoods which were considered premium materials that any proper wealthy person would prefer in their home. By the mid to late 1990s there was a huge shift and wealthy people building custom homes started to request LEED certification instead which completely changed everything. Out with the tropical hardwoods and in with reused barn beams. And all through this time the argument focused on legalities when evidence was mounting that the tastes and preferences of the wealthy were what really made the difference.

When I was tech implementation manager for a bunch of salesforce building in the US... 50 Fremont street sanfrancisco - they built waterfall reception desks from Koa Wood, where the wood had to be purchased from other, previously built pieces. IIRC the average price for each of these reception desk pieces was $65,000

Koa trees cannot be harvested and so to get Koa wood - you have to buy something that was already built and then make your thing out of it..

The use of tropical woods can basically be ignored in the discussion of deforestation.

1. When you harvest wood, the forest will generally recover and new trees will grow.

2. Lumber only accounts for about 2% of the total area deforested.

3. Agriculture accounts for 90+% of deforested area, most of this being for cattle or soy, and once land is converted to agriculture the change is generally permanent.

These are good ideas, but the numbers are flatly unbelievable. Until quite recently most tropical hardwood was harvested illegally and distributed through black markets. This often involved either clear cutting or selective removal of rare trees or both. There is very little if any hard information about exactly how much tropical deforestation in the 1980s involved lumber, though there has been significant progress in enforcement since then.

I wonder how much of this changed due to public sentiment driven by pop culture? Movies like Fern Gully[0] and TV shows like Captain Planet[1] definitely had a hand in shaping my generation growing up.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully:_The_Last_Rainforest

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planete...

Forest cover in just about every first world country has been increasing since the the late 1970s, which predates these shows. All deforestation since then has been occurring almost exclusively in poor countries, not to mention most other environmental problems such as the dumping of plastics and toxic chemicals into the ocean.

It seems to me that a clean environment is a kind of pleasure project that people are willing to spend money on only once they can afford it.

I mean, follow the money. Why are those countries dumping chemicals, plastics in the ocean? Why are they cutting down forests and agriculturizing their land?

Mostly because the rich countries pay them to do it, basically. So they can build our toys and grow our beef. In other words, we export our environmental damage so we can afford to keep our environment cleaner.

The modern environmental movement got its start in the late 1960s. So that’s consistent, although not with TV shows.

This is one reason I have a lot of faith in humanity. There are many fear mongers publishing all sorts of scary stories about climate change but I am sorry if we can send people to the moon and cure all sorts of diseases, we can sort out the climate problem with technology too.

The rate of deforestation peaked. Deforestation is still ongoing.

We can sort out the climate problem with technology, sure. The thing is, we already have it.

What you probably mean is, you want to sort out the climate problem with hypothetical technology that would change absolutely nothing to our ways of life and cost us nothing. Maybe this hypothetical technology should also give us free massages otherwise who would bother changing?

What is the rate of reforestation?

We cut down less trees in the 2010s that in the 1980s but we still cut down trees. The world's forested area is continuously decreasing, just less fast.

But don't you have to measure the number of new trees planted/grown?

There will always be a positive # of trees felled by humans. Even if there are only 10 of them on the planet.

> hypothetical technology that would change absolutely nothing to our ways of life and cost us nothing

AKA nuclear power.

Sure, this should be part of the solution, but nuclear power doesn't cost nothing, it's either quite expensive or quite dangerous.

Also, this only answers the question of decarbonization of the electricity, which is maybe 25% of the problem. You still need to address transportation, heating, cooling, land use, meat consumption, etc. This is where people will need to change their ways of life, at least just a bit.

> transportation, heating, cooling

Cant you already do all these with electricity?

Well, absolutely, and that's my original point. All the technology necessary to combat climate change is already there, but people aren't using it because it's marginally less convenient or more expensive.

Or people aren't actually interested in combating global warming and want to push changes for other reasons.

The risk is that we'll all be dead long before this magic tech is invented.

If you think deforestation is solved, then you didn't read the article beyond the headline.

can't believe. what about the Amazon forest decimation threads we've had here?

Your brain is wired to upvote and share apocalyptic news more than positive news.

No, it's just that there is not as much forest that is as easily exploitable as there was in the 80s, so of course the rate has to go down. We already cut most of it down.

[edit] forest cover is still going down. we are not increasing the amount of forest. the first derivative of forest has gone down. that's meaningless. forest is still going to approach zero at the current rate.

"In total, the increase in leaf area over the past two decades corresponds to an area as large as the Amazon rainforest. There are now over two million square kilometers more green leaf area compared to the beginning of the 2000s. That is an increase of five percent."

https://www.warpnews.org/human-progress/nasa-the-earth-is-gr...

As the article notes, it's not all good news and deforestation needs to decrease in certain regions. But it's also not true that we already cut most of it down. There are more trees today than 20 and 100 years ago.

Global forest proliferation and Amazon deforestation can happen at the same time.

You understand that old growth forest and new growth forest have completely different ecological profiles, right? False equivalence. Regreening of new growth forest does not make up for the same amount of area as old growth.

Shifting the goal posts. The article and the comments were not talking about ecological profiles, but rather deforestation.

Sorry, but you are just straight up wrong. Even if reforestation percentage has increased in recent years, the derivative of forest is still negative, and the reforestation is new growth, which as I mentioned is not as ecologically useful.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS

> There are more trees today than 20

You didn't read the article.

I did read it and there I've read others that say this: https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/earth-has-more-trees-now-t...

I take it that trend held up over the last 20 years given what NASA has reported on plant growth increasing by 5% this century. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146296/global-green...

Deforestation and reforestation are separate measurements, but the article does mention both and here is a quote:

"For the past 30 years, temperate regions have seen a continued increase in forest cover through afforestation: you see this as the bars are now ‘positive’ (pointing upwards). Across temperate forests the world gained 6 million hectares in the last decade."

Then you don't understand what a net loss is, and you ignore the massive caveats of the article you cite to push your point.

You're all over this thread pushing bad faith arguments. Who pays you?

It was much worse in the 1980s. There was serious concern back then that the Amazon would mostly be gone by now. But the deforestation rate has declined since then. It's still far from ideal, and there was a recent surge. But it's not apocalyptic.

From what I know the damage to the Amazon rainforest is greater than ever. Some models seem to suggest that a savannah could be another stable state that the region could exist in. Fears are now that the area could undergo a rapid transition between these states because the decreasing rainforest coverage can no longer give rise to the weather patterns that help to sustain it.

Well, it's not greater than ever. It's among the largest (not the largest) numbers on the current time series, that started at the late 90's. It's known that the entire series is much lower than the historic amounts, but the previous data is not precise enough to tell by how much.

The rest of your comment is spot on, but those fears have been there since the 70's. Of course, as deforestation continues, we move closer and closer to that scenario, but nobody can tell if it's actually any close. Anyway, systematic forest loss due to increased temperatures (and the weather changes they bring) is much more worrisome, since this one is already happening all around the world.

Temperate forests, like we have them in North America, Europe and northern Asia (i.e. Russia) are growing back.

The Amazon is a rainforest and these are still being cut down faster than they regrow.

Meanwhile, there are plans for environmental restoration of parts of Siberia through... deforestation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park

This makes you wonder - did the whole save the trees movement give rise to a far dangerous alternative, the mass usage of plastics?

I don't think that would explain the transition from reusable milk glass bottles to plastic milk jugs. A decrease in deforestation doesn't explain a systemic rise in using plastics.

Moreover, plastic straws were in use before the 1980s, and only since the 80s has there been pressure to replace them with paper-based straws.

Plastic is cheaper by weight, lighter, easier to form and far more adjustable in appearance. It has a broader range of temperature responses, chemical responses, physical properties and textures. It is in general harder to break. In short, plastic excels because it is apparently cheap and useful and its dire costs, in particular of single use plastics and in particular to the commons, are - much like other systemic issues burgeoning under capitalism - never adequately accounted for.

The whole save-the-trees movement did nothing for 98% of the world's population, and the mass usage of plastics was propped up by companies switching to a cheaper and more efficient material, with no regard for consequences (because why would they? They need economic incentives for that).

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