What is "clearcutting"

n. A forestry practice in which most or all trees in a harvest area are cut down.

Clearcutting, clearfelling, or clearcut logging is a forestry/ logging practice in which most or all trees in an area are uniformly cut down. Clearcutting, along with shelterwood and seed tree harvests, is used by foresters to create certain types of forest ecosystems and to promote select species that require an abundance of sunlight or grow in large, even-age stands. Logging companies and forest-worker unions in some countries support the practice for scientific, safety, and economic reasons. Detractors see clearcutting as synonymous with deforestation, destroying natural habitats and contributing to climate change.

Clearcutting is the most common and economically profitable method of logging. However, clearcutting also imposes other externalities in the form of detrimental side effects such as loss of topsoil; the value of these costs is intensely debated by economic, environmental, and other interests. Aside from the purpose of harvesting wood, clearcutting is also used to create land for farming. The "insatiable human demand for wood and arable land" through clearcutting and other activities has led to the loss of over half of the world's rainforests.

While deforestation of both temperate and tropical rainforests through clearcutting has received considerable media attention in recent years, the other large forests of the world, such as the taiga, also known as boreal forests, are also under threat of rapid development. The same reasons for preserving the world’s tropical rainforests also apply to the taiga, as do the reasons for destroying them. In Russia, as in North America and Scandinavia, creating protected areas and granting long-term leases to tend and regenerate trees—thus maximizing future harvests—are ways of limiting the harmful effects of clearcutting. Long-term studies of clearcut forests, such as studies of the Pasoh Rainforest in Malaysia, are also important in providing insights into the preservation of forest resources worldwide.