Chapter 32. North and Central America and the Caribbean

Figure 32-1. North and Central America: subregional division used in this report

North America, Central America and the Caribbean (see Figure 32-1[47] and Table 32-1) together contain about 549 million hectares of forests, corresponding to 14 percent of the world total. The forests of North America, Central America and the Caribbean amount to 1.1 ha per capita, which is above the world average. The forest areas of Central America and the Caribbean are located mainly in the subtropical ecological domain. Forest cover in North America is distributed between the temperate and boreal ecological zones. Some 86 percent of the region's forests is in two large countries - Canada and the United States. The forests in the region do not constitute a major proportion of any ecological zone; however, this is the most diversified region with all but two ecological zones represented. The net change of forest area is -570 000 ha per year, which represents the sum of a high net loss in Central America and a considerable increase in the United States.

Table 32-1. North and Central America: forest resources by subregion

Subregion	Land area	Forest area 2000					Area change 1990-2000 (total forest)		Volume and above-ground biomass (total forest)
		Natural forest	Forest plantation	Total forest
	000 ha	000 ha	000 ha	000 ha	%	ha/capita	000 ha/year	%	M3/ha	t/ha
Central America	241 942	72 300	729	73 029	30.2	0.5	-971	-1.2	86	93
Caribbean	22 839	5 145	566	5 711	25.0	0.2	13	0.2	57	98
North America	1 837 992	454 326	16 238	470 564	25.6	1.5	388	0.1	128	95
Other North and Central America	34 193	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Total North and Central America	2 136 966	531 771	17 533	549 304	25.7	1.1	-570	-0.1	123	95
TOTAL WORLD	13 063 900	3 682 722	186 733	3 869 455	29.6	0.6	-9 391	-0.2	100	109

Source: Appendix 3, Tables 3, 4, 6 and 7.