21 March 2014, IISD news - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has  released a new forest data set based on a global remote sensing survey, which  shows that global forests continue to decline, with the greatest rates of  deforestation occurring in Africa and South America.

Overall, the data indicates that as of 2010, there were 3.89 billion hectares  of forests covering 30% of the Earth's terrestrial surface. Deforestation  amounted to over five million hectares over the 20-year period from 1990 to  2010. The most dominant forest ecosystem remains within the tropical  domain, followed by boreal forests, then temperate forests, with the smallest  coverage in subtropical areas.

The FAO data is intended to support the achievements of the Zero Illegal  Deforestation challenge and was developed through a network of 200 experts  across 107 countries. The survey was carried out in collaboration with the  European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC).

Source: http://forests-l.iisd.org/news/