Most of the places where really bad stuff happens are outside of high detail coverage of free satellite image access, which can make it difficult to spot what is going on. Most of the timber industry is like that. Therefore we need to read between the lines in some places. Here you can see how logging operations transport the felled trees to sawmills for processing in a high-resolution area right on the edge.
Floating logs to get them to the sawmill hasn’t changed much in the last few hundred years. What has changed is the number of trees.
In keeping with larger demand, better transportation, and economies of scale, Canadians are cutting down more trees than ever. Of course one reason this is possible is that they have so very many trees in Canada. According to Natural Resources Canada, CanFI 2001 estimates the total forest area at 401.5 million hectares, down from the 417.6 million hectares cited in CanFI 1991, although they warn not to compare the two samples to each other.
Among other reasons for the difference, they changed the definition of a forest to include only ground cover, and not just big trees. Plus, they inventoried one-third more land. So it really is like comparing apples and oranges, which may have been the whole point. I expect that counting only ground cover relates to their new methodology.
They’re now using satellites as their primary counting method. Direct observation of grids, meaning they divide Canada into a huge grid and check each one for green. Tougher to detect the height of the trees.
Either way it’s not like they are going to run out of trees tomorrow, and it should be noted that Canada does a far better job of protecting its vast resources than the United States has been doing. Those bare spots add up quickly, and it may be a matter of time before they outnumber the forested spots, like in the lower 48.
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