Global Forestry Data for the Economic Modeling of Land Use

In recent years, considerable concern has been raised about the sustainability of the world's forested ecosystems (FAO, 2003). With deforestation rates in tropical regions estimated to be as high as 12 million hectares per year (FAO, 2003; Houghton, 2003), much of the concern has centered around tropical deforestation. In contrast to these developments in tropical areas, there is evidence that the area of forests in temperate regions is expanding. Given the large potential storage of carbon in both temperate and tropical forests, these changes in land use can potentially lead to large fluxes of carbon both into and out of forests (Houghton, 2003; Plattner et al. 2002; Dixon et al., 1994). In addition to the potential carbon fluxes, forest management and land use change influences a host of other local and global environmental impacts.