In the US, there was massive deforestation in the 1800's, homesteaders were given tracts and were required to clear them of trees. For every 160 acres they agreed to clear, they were allowed to have another 30 acres to keep in timber. If you didn't clear the land in five years, you were not allowed any more homestead acreage.
It is well known that American deforestation caused the dust bowls, it is illegal in N Dakota to cut down the quarter section treelines.
The benefit of trees is well demonstrated.
I'm sure in the Eastern US and most defiantly in Europe, the percentages were far higher -- probably 60 - 80% respectively.
It is well known that American deforestation caused the dust bowls
This, I have to disagree with. The 1920s dust bowel was a result of farming on land that nature intended to be covered with thick layers of prairie grass sod, combined with a cyclical multi-year drought. Dry soil (little or no irrigation capability back then) that had no protective covering of sod mixed with typical prairie winds, makes a dust bowl.
A hundred years earlier (when there no farming on the plains, and no trees to speak of either) there would not have been a dust bowl, but raging prairie grass fires instead. But the sod would have kept the soil from blowing away. Deforestation had absolutely nothing to do with the dust bowl.
B.S.