I am reading many articles that tells Africa has the highest deforestation rate in the world. However, I couldn't find any recent peer reviewed article that tells this information. Can anyone suggest me a recent peer reviewed article for this?
Thanks a lot,
Binyam.
Dear Binyam
You can use FAO data with safety. i.e. check FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 or a newer edition.
http://www.fao.org/forestry/32033/en/
Forest annual change rate (2000-2005)
Africa : -0.62%
South and South-east Asia: -0.98%
Central America: -1.23%
Good luck
See table 2.4 (page 18) final column and third from final column (%) in:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1757e/i1757e.pdf
This work is not "peer reviewed" as a paper, but as an official UN product it does have authority and Africa comes out with the highest deforestation rate in 1990-2000 and 2000-2010 so is likely the source you refer to.
For a peer reviewed article saying somewhat contrasting things (but note it does depend what you define as "forest" and "rate") try the Hansen et al. 2013, e.g. at http://www.yadvindermalhi.org/uploads/1/8/7/6/18767612/hansen_science-2013.pdf
It doesn't highlight Africa as having the highest rate but the tables in the supporting materials do give a lot of summary data by country and biome if you wanted to refer to that.
Hi Binyam,
As others have already mentioned, there are quality,reliable and authentic documents out there which are not peer-reviewed but written by professionals.
For instance, mongabay.com deforestation data at http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/ is very reliable and regularly updated.
Goodluck
Check out Hansen et al (2013) 'High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change' in Science (Vol. 342 no. 6160 pp. 850-853).There is also a website on which you can zoom in on specific areas etc (details in paper, I think). Tropek et al (2014) claim it "does not distinguish tropical forests from plantations and even herbaceous crops", however Hansen et al (2014) reply that the "criticisms suffer from a miscomprehension of the definition of forest employed as well as the requirements of product validation." I found the paper useful when researching deforestation and afforestation impacts on the hydrological cycle.
