India once had 14.8 billion acres of land that was forested, but now
has reduced to just 8.6 billion acres.

Some of the human activities that lead to deforestation are; Agriculture, Wood Harvesting, Grazing Land, Mining and Palm Oil.  Consequences of Deforestation are Undernourishment leading to death, Shifting of scores of wildlife animals to urban areas and Green house effect.

Forest Survey of India assess the forest cover of the country on a two-year cycle using satellite data. The main objective is presentation of the information on forest resources of the country at state and district level and to prepare forest cover maps on 1:50,000 scale. First assessment of forest cover of the country was made in 1987 and thereafter eight more assessments have been made. District wise information on forest cover has been made available from the third assessment (i.e. from 1991) onwards.

As per  State of Forest Report 2011 statistics, the total geographical area (GA) and recorded forest area are summarized state wise in following table and is available in SFR-2011.

For a global perspective it will be better to have a look at top ten countries in the world and forests in them.