Deforestation or logging is the removal and destruction of a forest or mass of trees from the land that is then converted for non-forest use. Felling is the process of felling trees, an element of the felling task. The person who cuts down the trees is a lumberjack. A cutter is a machine capable of cutting down a single large tree or a group and cutting down several small ones simultaneously.
Deforestation is the intentional felling of forested land. Throughout history and into modern times, forests have been razed to make room for agriculture and animal grazing, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing and construction. A major cause of deforestation is the felling of trees for wood. But the impact of this destruction doesn't end there. A large proportion of trees are discarded on the forest floor, increasing the risk of forest fires.
Felling trees also rips apart forest canopies, exposing more sunlight and wind to the forest floor, drying up fallen debris and undergrowth, making them even more flammable. Large-scale deforestation of trees affects ecosystems and the climate and even increases the risk of zoonotic diseases spreading to humans. This map shows the net change in forest cover around the world. Countries with a positive change (shown in green) are gaining forests faster than they are losing them.
Countries with a negative change (shown in red) are losing more than they can restore. Data on net forest change, afforestation and deforestation come from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's forest resources assessment. Since year-to-year changes in forest cover can be volatile, the United Nations FAO provides these averaged annual data for five-year periods. This was an experiment carried out with regard to the felling of trees and the continuous felling of trees in booming corridors, which could lead to an increase in the productivity of the harvesters.
All deforestation would be considered tree loss, but much of the tree loss would not be considered deforestation. The resilience of human food systems and their capacity to adapt to future changes are linked to biodiversity, including tree and tree species adapted to drylands that help combat desertification, insects that inhabit forests, bat and bird species that pollinate crops, trees with extensive root systems in mountain ecosystems that prevent soil erosion, and mangrove species that provide resilience against flooding in coastal areas. This is because in older, less fertile soils, trees grow too slowly for forestry to be economical, while in areas with a strong dry season, there is always a risk that forest fires will destroy an arboreal crop before it matures. The notch is the groove that guides or points to the tree and is a V-shaped notch that is placed on the side of the tree in the direction of the expected fall.