Yes, There have been many studies of the US and trees. The general concensus is that man is stopping or limiting the destruciton of forest fires. So fewer trees and smaller areas are burned where fires used to go on unchecked for god only knows how long.
Out west fires are getting worse again mainly because of good forest managemetn coupled with a poorly thought out new policy., The new policy does not allow or severely limits controlled burns. The controlled burns remove the scrub brush etc and ensure that when a natural wild fire does come there is less fuel to be burned. Because of this new policy scrub brush is building up and when natural fires occr they are now much more destructive.
Redwoods are in fact somewhat endangered by this. Redwood have very thick bark that makes it so they can survuve most fires. However with good land management and NO controlled burns, naturally occurring fires are destorying forests where in the past the fires would have only cleared the scrub brush. Just one more example of what looks like a good idea gone wrong.
On your quesiton, yes deforestation is being offset somewhat. Want proof? Run the numbers. Look at how much land is estimated to be deforested EVERY year. Look at how many years they have been saying this. Now look at how much forest remains. Last step and this is the hard part (sarc) how much land does planet earth have? Does the deforested # (square miles per year * number of years + existing forested land) make any sense or pass the laugh test?
Partially. But consider not just acreage, but mass.
A lot of the forest gains are relatively short trees. A lot of the forest losses are trees that were huge. Rainy areas like tropical rainforests tend to have much taller trees than more arid areas like the southwest US. So even if the acre-for-acre tradeoffs are even, that doesn't mean we're not losing considerable biomass.
Are these your opinions, I ask because the US west and southwest have been losing more trees and vegetation due to forest fires each year due to drought and heatwaves.
Rain-forest which are the world's second largest carbon sink have continued to be decimated more each year. This is done for building materials and agriculture which does include grazing. Unfortunately instead of using proper farming methods and allowing cattle to overgraze (which you mention) they tear down more forest and start mismanaging the new land
Where on earth did you come across the fantasy that woodlands are increasing
A little bit but not much, however CO2 is greatly offsetting deforestation especially in desert areas, the Sahara, Kalahari and Southern Australia, estimates are up to 8% increase in biomass since 1980, not including soil biomass over and above deforestation.
Considered the UK in ancient times it was all forest and woodland, now it is all fields and hedgerows, with moorland and small wooded areas, pretty but man-made.
Forests are like any other crop in reality. You can harvest them and left to its own, natural regeneration will take place with various pioneer tree species and ultimately, yes, the climax species, the dominant tree formation. Deforestation and planting agricultural or other crops prevents natural regeneration. An area left alone will eventually return to forest providing of course that some seeds remain or are brought in - by water or wind or other means.
Deforestation refers to the loss or destruction of naturally occurring forests, primarily due to human activities such as logging, cutting trees for fuel, slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing land for livestock grazing, mining operations, oil extraction, dam building, and urban sprawl or other types of development and population expansion.
I don't have any data on it, but my feeling is the loss of forest in poor 3rd world areas far out paces the gains in rich countries.
Deforestation is obviously happening around the world, and if I'm not mistaken, it is happening mainly in our tropical and boreal forests. But is the number of trees being felled being offset? I say this because in many areas the number of trees has actually increased. Examples include;
-the eastern (particularly southeastern) USA, where fires that once thinned out pine, oak and hickory woods into open woodlands and savannah, are now dense woods with mor trees than before.
-areas like the southwest and Great Plains, where irrigation has allowed the planting of many trees and shrubs on areas that were once grassland and desert. Fire suppression has also occurred in these areas. I believe that parts of Russia and Central Asia have expire never this as well.
- overgrazing in many areas by livestock such as cattle, which don't eat much woody vegetation, may have caused woodlands to increase in areas that would otherwise be grassland.
Could this have offset some tree loss?
