Figure 41-1. South America: subregional division used in this report
South America (see Figure 41-1[53] and Table 41-1) contains about 885 million hectares of forests which corresponds to 23 percent of the world total. South American forests amount to 2.6 ha per capita, which is considerably above the world average. Almost all forests are located in the tropical ecological domain and South America has about 54 percent of all tropical rain forests
and the proportion of forest cover in the tropical rain forest zone is 82 percent. Forest plantations represent just 1 percent of the total forest cover. The annual net loss, based on country reports, is high at 3.7 million hectares annually, corresponding to 0.4 percent annually.
Table 41-1. South America: forest resources by subregion
|
Subregion |
Land area |
Forest area 2000 |
Area change 1990-2000 (total forest) |
Volume and above-ground biomass (total forest) |
||||||
|
Natural forest |
Forest plantation |
Total forest |
||||||||
|
000 ha |
000 ha |
000 ha |
000 ha |
% |
ha/ capita |
000 ha/ year |
% |
m3/ha |
t/ha |
|
|
Non-tropical South America |
367 248 |
47 911 |
3 565 |
51 476 |
14.0 |
0.9 |
-255 |
-0.5 |
67 |
130 |
|
Tropical South America |
1 387 493 |
827 252 |
6 890 |
834 142 |
60.1 |
2.9 |
-3 456 |
-0.4 |
129 |
208 |
|
Total South America |
1 754 741 |
875 163 |
10 455 |
885 618 |
50.5 |
2.6 |
-3 711 |
-0.4 |
125 |
203 |
|
TOTAL WORLD |
13 063 900 |
3 682 722 |
186 733 |
3 869 455 |
29.6 |
0.6 |
-9 391 |
-0.2 |
100 |
109 |
Source: Appendix 3, Tables 3, 4, 6 and 7.
