Research-Deforestation

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• Forests cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.
• Removing trees deprives the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun’s rays during the day and holds in heat at night. This disruption leads to more extreme temperatures swings that can be harmful to plants and animals.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview/

• Half the world’s tropical forests have been cleared or degraded. Every hour, at least 4,500 acres of forest fall to chain saws, machetes, flames, or bulldozers. Population growth, poverty, and unequal access to land are among the major causes of deforestation (Forestry Department Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).
• Trees provide an important ecosystem function by storing carbon, a cause of climate change, in their biomass (wood, leaves, and roots). Currently the world’s forests store 283 billion tons (equivalent to the size of 40.1 billion elephants) of carbon in their biomass (Forestry Department Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).
• More than half of the world's timber and 72% of paper is consumed by 22% of the world's population (the United States, Europe, and Japan). Worldwide, industrialized countries consume over twelve times more wood products per person than non-industrialized countries. The United States has less than 5% of the world's population yet consumes more than 30% of the world's paper (Rainforest Action Network).
• Worldwide, 1.6 billion people rely on forest products for all or part of their livelihoods (World Resources Institute and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).

http://www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html