This Is The State With The Most Forest

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 5, 9:08AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This Is The State With The Most Forest — © pmstephens / iStock via Getty Images

Both internationally and nationally, forests have started to shrink. Part of the reason is that the land in forested areas has been recently used for something else. Another is that the demand for products like lumber has risen sharply.

The number and size of forests are widely different from state to state for another reason. Land use in heavily populated areas is tilted toward housing and places that catered to the daily needs of people. Forests are a luxury.

According to the USDA, forests now cover an estimated 36.2% of the 48 contiguous states, or about 818 million acres, including 190 million acres on federal lands.

[nativounit]

To determine America’s state with the most forest and woodland area, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data on land use from the United States Geological Survey. States are ranked by the share of total land area classified as forest and woodland. All states were included except Alaska and Hawaii, for which no updated land use data was available.

The top ten states by percentage of forested land all lie east of the Mississippi River, with New Hampshire, West Virginia, Maine, and Vermont in the lead, each comprising over 70% forest and woodland.

Besides providing habitat for countless species and harboring biodiversity, forests filter air and water, prevent erosion, provide society with both natural resources and a haven for recreation, and serve as buffers against climate change, even as it threatens to alter our forested landscapes.

Drought and wildfires, both symptoms of climate change, pose a significant threat to U.S. forests, especially in the West. In the last few decades, wildfire seasons have grown longer and the frequency and severity of wildfires in the U.S. has increased.

The state with the most forest is New Hampshire. Here are the details:

> Land covered by forest & woodland: 80.3%
> Area covered by forest & woodland: 4.8 million acres
> Other major land cover types: Developed & other human use (8.1%); agricultural & developed vegetation (4.2%); open water (4.0%)

Click here to read States With the Most Forest

[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.