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Compiled daily
Tree cover lost each year, by cause
Worldwide, 2001 to the latest year. Brown and grey: forest cleared for good (deforestation). Green, teal and red: loss after which forest usually grows back.
| Continent, latest year | All tree cover lost | Cleared for good | Lost to fire |
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Continents as Our World in Data groups them: Europe includes all of Russia, so Siberian fires count as European.
Where forest is cleared for good
Countries ranked by forest cleared for good in the latest year; the last column compares the last five years with 2001–2005.
| Country | Cleared for good | All tree cover lost | Clearing, last 5 years vs 2001–05 |
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Show the other — countries
| Country | Cleared for good | All tree cover lost | Clearing, last 5 years vs 2001–05 |
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One country
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Is deforestation slowing?
FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025, from countries’ own reports, and the independent Forest Declaration Assessment of the pledge, made by more than 140 countries in Glasgow in 2021, to halt forest loss by 2030.
What drives this
- Farming →Agriculture drove 90–99% of tropical deforestation in 2011–2015 (Pendrill et al. 2022).
- Wildfires →In 2024 fire caused almost half of all tree cover loss.
What this drives
- Amazon tipping point →Clearing and drought push the rainforest towards dieback.
How we know this
- Source: tree cover loss from the University of Maryland, mapped from Landsat satellite images, with the cause of each loss classified by Global Forest Watch / World Resources Institute (2025), as published by Our World in Data. FAO and Forest Declaration Assessment figures as published by them.
- Update cadence: yearly; the data for one year is published the following year. We check every night.
- Methods: “Cleared for good” adds up loss driven by farming, mining and energy, and settlements and roads. Each 1 km area is assigned its main cause.
- Uncertainty: Tree cover is not the same as natural forest: plantations count too, and the main-cause map is an estimate. FAO’s figures come from national reports and differ from satellite estimates.
- Limitations: Not a real-time alert system; for weekly alerts see Global Forest Watch.
- Primary data: Global Forest Watch · Our World in Data · FAO FRA · How this page is built