A new map from the University of Maryland is helping viewers understand the scope of deforestation across the globe.
A team at the university collected data on deforestation from 2000 to 2012, and the resulting map tracks forest lost and gained in those 12 years. The map, below, shows the extent of forests across the world with green markings and notes the areas that have lost forest in red.
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Overall, the data shows that the planet has lost 888,000 square miles of forest and gained 309,000 square miles of new forest. The world's net loss of more than 500,000 square miles is about size of Alaska, Smithsonian Magazine calculates.
“This is the first map of forest change that is globally consistent and locally relevant,” the team's leader, Matthew Hansen, said in a press release.
The research team worked with Google Earth Engine to produce the map. Over the years, the engine and its cameras monitored vegetation taller than 16 feet to track the landscape.
The map is interactive: Users can zoom out to see an overview of deforestation, or zoom in to hyper local spots. The map offers pull-down options to compare how natural disasters impact the landscape, such as the path of a tornado in Alabama or a storm in France that knocked down wide swathes of trees.
The mapping team reports that Indonesia has had the largest increase in forest loss, while Brazil showed the largest decline in annual forest loss of any country.
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