Forests: Where Wood Raw Material Comes From

Forest zones at a glance

Two sources with two reference years, kept in separate columns rather than blended. Forest area is FRA 2020, the last assessment to publish absolute areas by climatic domain; the shares are FRA 2025, which publishes percentages only.

Growing stock, ownership and designation are not published by climatic domain in either assessment. Where this page gives them, it gives them globally and says so.

What the terms mean

Most disagreements about forest statistics are disagreements about four words, so they are worth stating plainly. These are FAO's own definitions.

• Forest: land over 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 metres and canopy cover above 10 percent, or able to reach those thresholds. Land under agricultural or urban use is excluded.
• Naturally regenerating forest: forest predominantly composed of trees established through natural regeneration.
• Planted forest: forest predominantly composed of trees established through planting or deliberate seeding. Predominantly means more than half the growing stock at maturity.
• Plantation forest: intensively managed planted forest of one or two species, even aged and regularly spaced. Forest planted for protection or restoration is explicitly excluded.

The last two are why "planted forest" means different things in different countries. A replanted Swedish spruce stand and a Brazilian eucalyptus estate are both planted forest; only the second is a plantation.

Planted forest

Planted forest covers about 312 million hectares, 8 percent of the world's forest, and roughly half of that is plantation forest. It matters out of all proportion to its area: planted forests supplied about 46 percent of global industrial roundwood in 2020, against about 44 percent from naturally regenerated temperate and boreal forest. Eight percent of the area supplies nearly half the industrial wood.

The zones carry very different amounts of it. A quarter of subtropical forest is planted and a seventh of temperate forest, against roughly one fiftieth of boreal and tropical forest. That asymmetry explains much of where new pulp and sawmill capacity has been built this century.

How fast forests grow

Growth is mean annual increment (MAI) in cubic metres per hectare and year. Read the basis before comparing rows, because national inventories do not measure the same thing. Measured examples sit in each zone section below, each with the basis its inventory uses.

Boreal

The circumpolar belt across the Nordic countries, Russia, Canada and Alaska, and the largest zone after the tropics. Scots pine, Norway spruce, larch and birch, on rotations of roughly 70 to 120 years.

Almost all of it regenerates naturally: about 2 percent is planted, and most of that is replanting after harvest rather than plantation establishment. A short growing season produces dense wood with long fibres and straight, large-diameter stems, which is why one boreal tree commonly supplies both the strongest pulpwood and high-value sawlogs. Boreal forest area is stable or rising, and its deforestation rate is the lowest of any zone.

Finland reports 5.0 on forest land alone. Sweden also publishes a site-productivity figure, bonitet, of 5.4 m³sk/ha/yr, which is potential growth at culmination rather than measured growth, and the two are never quoted interchangeably. Canada does not report MAI in these units, and the Russian figures we could reach are from 1993 and cover unmanaged forest, so neither is shown.

Temperate

Central Europe, the Baltics, the northeastern United States, Chile, New Zealand and Japan. Mixed forest of pine, spruce, beech, oak, Douglas fir and radiata pine, with conifer rotations similar to the boreal zone and longer ones for hardwoods.

Around 14 percent is planted, the second highest share of any zone, and much of central Europe's forest is planted in FAO's sense without being plantation: even-aged spruce stands established by hand and grown on long rotations. Temperate forest area has risen steadily for decades, and the zone's industry draws as much on that accumulated stock as on current growth.

The German row counts only wood of 7 cm diameter and above, so it is not comparable with the boreal rows: that is what the basis column is for.

Subtropical

The southeastern United States, southern China, northern Argentina and the Mediterranean rim. Southern yellow pine, eucalyptus, maritime pine and cork oak, on rotations of 15 to 20 years for pulpwood and 25 to 40 or more for sawtimber.

This is the most heavily planted zone on earth: a quarter of its forest is planted, and it holds the largest single share of the world's planted forest. The southern United States is the clearest case, a working landscape of planted pine that feeds both the largest pulpwood market and the largest sawmilling sector anywhere. Mediterranean forest sits in the same zone on entirely different logic, closer to cork and fire management than to industrial supply.

Both rows come from research plots and company inventories at a stated stand age rather than from national remeasurement; research maxima under the best treatment reach 22.7 to 34.3 for southern pine and 24 to 30 on the most productive Portuguese sites.

Tropical

Brazil, Indonesia, equatorial Africa and Southeast Asia, and the largest zone by far at 45 percent of world forest. Eucalyptus and acacia plantations sit alongside vast natural forests that industry does not draw on.

The plantation estate is small in relative terms, under 3 percent of tropical forest, but it grows the fastest wood on the planet: harvest in 6 to 8 years, several times the annual volume per hectare of a boreal stand. That is the structural cost advantage behind the southern hemisphere's hardwood pulp capacity. It is also the only zone losing forest on balance, and the loss is overwhelmingly conversion to agriculture rather than forestry: gross deforestation here runs at more than ten times the rate of the other three zones combined.

Both rows come from company inventories and country reporting at a stated stand age rather than from national remeasurement; acacia country reporting spans 19 to 40.

Ownership and what forests are for

Neither is published by zone, so both are global. About 71 percent of the world's forest is publicly owned and 24 percent privately, but the balance varies sharply: public ownership approaches 90 percent in Europe including Russia, while private ownership is close to half in Oceania. Of privately owned forest, roughly half is held by individuals and almost a third by Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

About 29 percent of the world's forest is designated for production and around 20 percent lies inside legally protected areas. Designation is not availability: terrain, tenure, protection and distance to a mill all remove wood from the harvestable pool before economics is considered at all.

How fast forests grow

Growth is mean annual increment (MAI) in cubic metres per hectare and year. Read the basis before comparing rows, because national inventories do not measure the same thing.

The German row counts only wood of 7 cm diameter and above, so it is not comparable with the Nordic rows: that is what the basis column is for. Finland reports 5.0 on forest land alone. Sweden also publishes a site-productivity figure, bonitet, of 5.4 m³sk/ha/yr, which is potential growth at culmination rather than measured growth, and the two are never quoted interchangeably. The plantation rows come from research plots and company inventories at a stated stand age rather than from national remeasurement; research maxima under the best treatment reach 22.7 to 34.3 for southern pine and 24 to 30 on the most productive Portuguese sites, and acacia country reporting spans 19 to 40. Canada does not report MAI in these units, and the Russian figures we could reach are from 1993 and cover unmanaged forest, so neither is shown.