It is estimated that—at the beginning of European settlement— in 1630 the area of forest land that would become the United States was 423 million hectares or about 46 percent of the total land area. By 1907, the area of forest land had declined to an estimated 307 million hectares or 34 percent of the total land area. Forest area has been relatively stable since 1907. In 1997, 302 million hectares— or 33 percent of the total land area of the United States— was in forest land. Today’s forest land area amounts to about 70 percent of the area that was forested in 1630. Since 1630, about 120 million hectares of forest land have been converted to other uses—mainly agricultural. More than 75 percent of the net conversion to other uses occurred in the 19th century.Also, between 1953 and 1997, volume of forest per hectare in the North has almost doubled, and in the South increased by about 80%.
See my last. The arguement that there is less land under forestation is not being taken issue with...though the numbers quoted include foretable land and reserve, not a lot of land in urban and suburban areas not included.
But my statement that there are more trees (as a result of the massive increase in production from the forestable land) than there wer in the 1800s stands. We are getting much more yield per acre and much quicker growth times which I have explained in prior posts.