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The scale of deforestation

The scale of deforestation is frightening. Writer and editor Ashley Fleming shares an infographic to explain some of the issues

Every year the earth loses roughly 15 billion trees. This is a figure so huge it is difficult to comprehend. How can we picture 15 billion trees, or one billion trees for that matter? What kind of area does that cover?


Such towering numbers are almost impossible to grasp, which is one of the reasons that eCO2 Greetings created this graphic to help illustrate the shocking scale of deforestation.


The idea behind this piece is to show just how much forest the earth is losing, and how quickly it is losing it. For instance we lose an area of forest the size of New York City every two days!


Following this formula means that in just over three years we lose an area of forest the size of the state of California. In fifteen years the forest loss is equal to the size of Mexico, covering 72,000 square miles!


The scale of deforestation really is frightening. Here you can learn more about the damage being done, but also the work that's going on to prevent it.

The scale of deforestation infographic

Ashley Fleming is a writer and editor who looks after the blogs at green ecard providers eCO2Greetings and Ecardshack. Ashley is based in the UK and writes about environmentalism and sustainability whenever possible. He likes to spend his free time walking and adventuring in the countryside.

Green Adventures November 2016