| The world's largest forest is located in northern Russia, lying between 55 ° North and the Arctic Circle, covering a total area of about 2.7 billion acres. It is a coniferous forest. More than 25 percent of the world's forest are in Siberia, in Russia. Only 1/5th, or 20% of all the worlds frontier forests going back to 8,000 years remain undestroyed today. Rain forests are defined as forests that grow in regions that receive more than 70 inches (1.8 meters) of rain each year. Tropical rain forests cover more than 2 billion acres (0.8 billion hectares), or about 7% of the Earths land surface. According to a U.S. National Academy of Sciences report, a typical patch of rain forest covering four square miles (10.4 square kilometers) contains 750 species of trees, 750 species of other plants, 125 species of mammals, 400 species of birds, 100 species of reptiles, and 60 species of amphibians. A study of a rain forest in Venezuela found that 75 percent of the nutrients were found in living organisms like plants and trees, 17 percent were in debris, and 8 percent were in the soil. In 1995, the world had 1,733,959,000 hectares of tropical rainforests, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In 1990, the world had a total of 3,963,429,000 hectares of forestry, compared to 3,869,455,000 hectares, a drop of 2.4%, which made up 29.6% of the world's land in 2000. The world's forests in 1990 covered 4,482,876 square miles (11,609,750 square kilometers), with 30.68% of the forests in Brazil, 9.78% in Indonesia, and 9.09% in Zaire. It is estimated that at the beginning of European settlement in 1630, the area of forest land that would become the United States was 423 million hectares, or about 46% of the total land area. By 1907, the area of forest land had declined to an estimated 307 million hectares or 34% of the total land area. In 1997, 302 million hectares, or 33%, of the total land area of the United States was in forest land. |
| Forest Factsheet |
World ---------------- |