Tree
What is a Forest?
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  The term 'forest' encompasses an enormous range of habitats, from elfin cloud-forests a few metres tall to 50 metre-high stands of redwoods or eucalypts; and from single-species conifer plantations to tropical moist forests of extraordinary complexity.

The major problem in mapping forests is in deciding at what point tree cover becomes dense enough to be called a forest rather than, say, an open woodland. There is no straightforward answer. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) classifies as forest any area with more than 10 per cent canopy cover. But this very wide definition includes many areas which few would regard as forests. A more satisfactory definition is one covering closed-canopy forest: any area with over 40 per cent crown cover. This works well with broadleaf or mixed coniferous and broadleaf forests but less well with purely coniferous forests, where canopy cover is often less than 40 per cent.



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