Deforestation Annotated Bibliography
Research on forest loss, its drivers, measurement, and global land-use patterns
01
GLOBAL FOREST
BASELINE
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2020).
Global forest resources assessment 2020:
Main report
. https://doi.org/10.4060/ca9825en
This assessment provides a global overview of forest resources, their condition, management, and
changes from 1990 to 2020. It draws on country reporting and remote-sensing information from 236
countries and territories, making it useful for establishing the scale and geographic pattern of
deforestation. The report distinguishes deforestation from net forest-area change, an important
distinction for academic research because forest gains do not necessarily replace the ecological
functions of forests that were cleared. As an international forest assessment, it is strongest as a baseline
and data source. A researcher can use it to frame a paper before turning to journal studies that
investigate causes and consequences in greater detail.
02
CAUSES
Geist, H. J., & Lambin, E. F. (2002). Proximate causes and underlying driving forces of tropical
deforestation.
BioScience, 52
(2), 143–150.
https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2002)052[0143:PCAUDF]2.0.CO;2
Geist and Lambin examine why tropical deforestation occurs and separate immediate land-use
activities from the broader forces that make them possible. Their framework considers processes such
as agricultural expansion, wood extraction, and infrastructure development alongside economic
conditions, institutions, national policies, and other underlying influences. The article is useful because
it discourages a single-cause explanation of deforestation and instead shows how several factors can
operate together. Its peer-reviewed publication and explicit causal framework make it valuable for
organizing a research paper on drivers of forest loss. Although older, it remains a foundational source
for understanding how deforestation causes are analyzed.
03
GLOBAL MAPPING
Hansen, M. C., Potapov, P. V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S. A., Tyukavina, A., Thau, D.,
Stehman, S. V., Goetz, S. J., Loveland, T. R., Kommareddy, A., Egorov, A., Chini, L., Justice, C. O., &
Townshend, J. R. G. (2013). High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change.
Science,
342
(6160), 850–853. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1244693
This study uses 30-meter Earth-observation satellite data to produce a globally consistent record of
forest loss and gain from 2000 to 2012. The researchers mapped about 2.3 million square kilometers of
forest loss and 0.8 million square kilometers of gain, while showing important differences among
tropical, subtropical, and boreal regions. The article is particularly useful for deforestation research
because it demonstrates how remote sensing can measure forest change at high spatial resolution. Its
global coverage also makes it a strong source for discussing regional patterns rather than relying only
on individual country reports. The underlying mapping approach provides a methodological foundation
for later forest-monitoring work.
