Since 1948, when the result of the first report on forest resources was released, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has published many reports related to estimates on forest and forest plantation area.
During the last twenty years several reports concerning forest plantations have been produced by FAO and the increased availability of information together with the accessibility of reports has allowed a progressive improvement of the assessments and reliability of data. The different data sets detailed in various FAO reports on forest and plantation area assessment over the years can be confusing for users of the statistics. This summary is prepared to assist the readers using forest plantation resources data to more fully understand the different data sets during the past two decades.
