deforestation

plural deforestations

1. countableuncountableThe process of destroying a forest and replacing it with something else, especially with an agricultural system.

   Buried within the Mediterranean littoral are some seventy to ninety million tons of slag from ancient smelting, about a third of it concentrated in Iberia. This ceaseless industrial fueling caused the deforestation of an estimated fifty to seventy million acres of woodlands.

   2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion

   1 more example

   The world leaders gathered at a crucial climate summit secured new agreements on Tuesday to end deforestation and reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane, building momentum as the conference prepared to shift to a more grueling two weeks of negotiations on how to avert the planet’s catastrophic warming.

   2021 November 2, Jim Tankersley, Katie Rogers, Lisa Friedman, “With Methane and Forest Deals, Climate Summit Offers Hope After Gloomy Start”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Antonyms: afforestation, reforestation

2. countableuncountablecomputingA transformation to eliminate intermediate data structures within a program.