National Geographic – Deforestation is the purposeful clearing of forested land for farming or livestock, or using the timber for fuel, construction or manufacturing. The loss of trees from a forest can leave soil more prone to erosion causing the remaining plants to become more vulnerable to fire.
Today, the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring in tropical rainforests, aided by extensive road construction into regions that were once almost inaccessible. And in North America, about half of the forests in the eastern part of the continent were cut down from the 1600s to the 1870s for timber and agriculture.
