Find this article on the BBC website regarding changes to levels of Forestation over 2000-2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24934790 You can go in fairly detailed on the linked map http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest
Wow. That is really detailed and impressive. Thanks for posting it! Very interesting to browse over the map and see where things changed.
The most crucial figure missing from all news sites reporting on this report: The Earth loss between 3% and 4% of its tree cover in that period. (As far as I can tell – I could not find any reliable source on how much of Earth is a forested area).
That map is really interesting! Of particular interest to me is the "Example Locations", and the first option there is "Forestry and Tornado in Alabama". That zooms it into the one tornado track between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, but if you zoom out, you can see those diagonal tornado tracks all across the Southeast!
I had a lot of old notes on the effects of tornadoes on forests: Here are some newer finds: http://www.telegram.com/article/20120506/NEWS/105069763/1116 http://www.melletteforestry.com/forestry-and-tornadoes http://www.esri.com/esri-news/arcwatch/0413/forest-damage-from-tornadoes-assessed-with-arcgis Tim Marshall's old Stormtrack hardcopy zine, talked about how the Henderson Mountain tornado was destroying 1,000 trees per second at its height--this was in 1994, at the same time the Goshen Methodist church was collapsed by an inflow jet--not the tornado itself.