How well are forests preserved in a given area? Forests are one of the most important terrestrial habitats and a carbon sink that needs to be conserved to fulfil biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation targets. By informing of forest cover trends, and their spatial distribution, it is possible to highlight countries, ecoregions or specific protected areas with worrying forest loss trends, as well as others where forest cover is well maintained or even increases through time either naturally or through forestation.
Indicator unit: Forest change statistics are expressed as the trend in the percent of the land covered by forests, as well as the total forest area (km2 ) gained or lost when compared to the reference year 2000.
Area of interest: The forest cover for the year 2000 and the forest change statistics are computed for each protected area, each country and each ecoregion and are provided for each terrestrial and coastal protected area of size ≥ 1 km2 ,each country and each terrestrial ecoregion.
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Data Uploaded by Luca Battistella using the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas Services (2022)
Forest Dynamics
Forests concentrate a large portion of terrestrial biological diversity and are one of the main storages of carbon, which is accumulated in the forest biomass, in the dead organic matter and in the forest soils. Halting or reducing forest loss is required to ensure the conservation of many species that depend on forest habitats and ecosystems. On the other hand, a sustainable use and management of forests, which obtains wood and non-wood products for human use while ensuring forest persistence, is crucial to support, in many areas, the livelihoods of rural communities, which would otherwise get impoverished by a depleted forest cover. Avoiding forest loss, or increasing the area covered by forests where necessary, is also needed to preserve or restore many other important ecosystem services like water regulation, erosion control, pollution control or recreation. Forests are in risk in many areas due to a variety of pressures, most notably agricultural expansion but also extractive activities (such as mining), urbanization, infrastructure development or wildfires, among others.
Forest Dynamics
Forests concentrate a large portion of terrestrial biological diversity and are one of the main storages of carbon, which is accumulated in the forest biomass, in the dead organic matter and in the forest soils. Halting or reducing forest loss is required to ensure the conservation of many species that depend on forest habitats and ecosystems. On the other hand, a sustainable use and management of forests, which obtains wood and non-wood products for human use while ensuring forest persistence, is crucial to support, in many areas, the livelihoods of rural communities, which would otherwise get impoverished by a depleted forest cover. Avoiding forest loss, or increasing the area covered by forests where necessary, is also needed to preserve or restore many other important ecosystem services like water regulation, erosion control, pollution control or recreation. Forests are in risk in many areas due to a variety of pressures, most notably agricultural expansion but also extractive activities (such as mining), urbanization, infrastructure development or wildfires, among others.