Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

Global forest area

About this data

Source
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
August 10, 2017
Date range
1958–2014
Unit
hectares

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – FAOSTAT

FAOSTAT is the Food and Agriculture Organization's statistical database, providing free access to food and agriculture data for over 245 countries and territories.

Retrieved on
August 10, 2017
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017). FAOSTAT.

FAOSTAT is the Food and Agriculture Organization's statistical database, providing free access to food and agriculture data for over 245 countries and territories.

Retrieved on
August 10, 2017
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017). FAOSTAT.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Global forest area”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/global-forestry-area-1958-2014.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017) – processed by Our World in Data. “Global forest area” [dataset]. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “FAOSTAT” [original data]. Retrieved May 11, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/global-forestry-area-1958-2014.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

Download

Quick download

You can download the visualization as an image or download the chart data.