An evaluation of the FAO tropical forest resource assessment, 1990

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization's latest assessment of tropical forest resources in 1990, gives unreliable estimates of forest areas and deforestation rates in the humid tropics. Estimates for tropical rain forest are too low and statistics in the report cannot be used to derive estimates for tropical moist forest. Comparability with previous assessments is limited; the map used to divide tropical forest cover into different forest types is flawed; and the reliability of many estimates is further constrained by being based on outdated national surveys and modelling adjustments rather than a special pantropical remote sensing survey.