A 

forest is an area of land dominated by trees.[1] Hundreds of definitions of forest are

used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land
use, legal standing and ecological function.[2][3][4] The Food and Agriculture
Organization defines a forest as land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher
than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these
thresholds in situ. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or
urban land use.[5] Using this definition FRA 2020 found that forests covered 4.06 billion
hectares or approximately 31 percent of the global land area in 2020 but are not equally
distributed around the globe.[6]
Forests are the dominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are distributed around the
globe.[7] More than half of the world’s forests are found in only five countries (Brazil,
Canada, China, Russian Federation and United States of America). The largest part of
the forest (45 percent) is found in the tropical domain, followed by the boreal, temperate
and subtropical domains.[8]
Forests account for 75% of the gross primary production of the Earth's biosphere, and
contain 80% of the Earth's plant biomass. Net primary production is estimated at
21.9 gigatonnes carbon per year for tropical forests, 8.1 for temperate forests, and 2.6
for boreal forests.[7]
Forests at different latitudes and elevations, and with different precipitation and
evapotranspiration[9] form distinctly different biomes: boreal forests around the North
Pole, tropical moist forests and tropical dry forests around the Equator, and temperate
forests at the middle latitudes. Higher elevation areas tend to support forests similar to
those at higher latitudes, and amount of precipitation also affects forest composition.
Almost half the forest area (49 percent) is relatively intact, while 9 percent is found in
fragments with little or no connectivity. Tropical rainforests and boreal coniferous forests
are the least fragmented, whereas subtropical dry forest and temperate oceanic forests
are among the most fragmented. Roughly 80 percent of the world’s forest area is found in
patches larger than 1 million hectares. The remaining 20 percent is located in more than
34 million patches across the world – the vast majority less than 1 000 hectares in size.
[10]