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Forest Growth

Map No. 107

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The territory with the most forest expansion between 1990 and 2000 was China, which gained 181 000 km² over the ten year period. China is also the territory with the largest population living there. The forest growth in the United States was the second largest increase, but this was only a fraction of the increase in China, at 39 000 km².

Unsurprisingly the most absolute forest growth has occurred in the large territories mentioned above. However the biggest increases in forest as a percentage of land area were in smaller territories such as Cape Verde, Liechtenstein and Portugal.

Worldwide there is net forest loss.

"One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade." Chinese proverb, date unknown

Territory size shows the proportion of worldwide net forest growth that occurred there between 1990 and 2000.

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• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page