Random Forest Name Generator

How this random forest generator works

Press Generate and you get a forest and where it is. Turn up the Number box for several at once, no repeats. Copy takes them.

The Amazon. The Black Forest. Białowieża. Daintree. Sherwood. Monteverde Cloud Forest. Great Bear Rainforest. Tongass.

Before you use any of them, it is worth knowing that "forest" is not a description. It is a definition, written down, with numbers in it.

What counts as a forest is written down, and it is stranger than you think

Most people assume forest is something you recognise when you are standing in it. It is not. It is a legal and statistical category, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization writes the one that most of the world's governments report against.

A forest is land spanning more than 0.5 hectares, with trees higher than 5 metres and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach those thresholds where they stand. It excludes land predominantly under agricultural or urban use.

Read it twice, because two things are hiding in it.

First, 10 percent canopy cover is not very many trees. Stand in a place where nine tenths of the sky is open above you. That can be a forest.

Second, the FAO's own wording says a forest is determined both by the presence of trees and by the absence of other predominant land uses. Forest is partly defined by what the land is not. It is a residual category, the box you tick when nothing else applies.

A clear-cut with no trees on it is still a forest

This is where the definition earns its reputation.

The FAO's terms and definitions explicitly include areas that are temporarily unstocked because of clear-cutting as part of forest management, or because of natural disaster, and which are expected to regenerate.

Temporarily unstocked. Meaning: no trees. Meaning a hillside that has just been felled to bare mud, with not one living stem on it, is still counted as forest in the national statistics, provided somebody expects it to grow back.

Land that burned to ash last summer is forest. Land planted with saplings a foot high is forest. Land that will be felled next Tuesday is forest.

Is that dishonest? No. It is a land-use accounting system, and for its purpose it is the right one, because you do not want a country's forest area to swing wildly every time a logging rotation comes round. But it is not what you pictured.

The first Global Forest Resources Assessment was published in 1948. Since 1990 it has run every five years, and the 2020 edition covered more than sixty forest variables across 236 countries and territories.

Move the threshold and continents change colour

The FAO uses 10 percent canopy cover. Other definitions do not. Several European national definitions require canopy closure of at least 30 percent before they will call something a forest.

Here is what that does. A study of China's tree planting, published in a Royal Society journal, ran the numbers both ways. Under the FAO's threshold, including immature and temporarily unstocked land, the forested area was roughly an order of magnitude larger than under the stricter one.

Same country. Same decade. Same trees. Two definitions.

Which means the sentence "X percent of country Y is forested" is unanswerable until you say whose definition you are using. Two honest scientists, standing in the same field, can disagree about whether they are in a forest, and both be right.

Globally, by the 10 percent threshold, forests cover 4.06 billion hectares, which is 31 percent of the world's land. Raise the threshold and that figure falls sharply, because savannah, dry woodland and young plantation drop straight out of the category.

A national park is not a forest, and Sherwood was not a wood

Generate long enough and you will notice how many entries carry the word "National". National parks, national forests, national reserves.

These are not the same kind of object as the Amazon. A national park is a legal designation, drawn on a map by a government, with a boundary and a budget. A forest is an ecosystem. Yosemite is a park that contains forest. The Amazon is a forest that contains parks.

The confusion is old, and English is the reason. In medieval English law, a forest was land subject to forest law: a royal hunting reserve, where the king's deer were protected and the local people were not allowed to interfere with them. It did not have to have trees. Dartmoor and Exmoor were legally forests, and they are moorland.

So Sherwood Forest was a jurisdiction before it was a wood, which is a much better fact than the man who allegedly hid in it.

And then there is the Boreal Forest, also called the taiga, which is not a place at all. It is a biome: a band of conifers wrapped right around the northern hemisphere, through Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia, the largest land biome on the planet. Asking where it is gets you an answer roughly the size of a hemisphere.

Park, ecosystem, jurisdiction, biome. Four different things, one word.

Ways people actually use this

• Travel and hiking shortlists. Most of these you have not heard of.
• Quizzes. Show the forest, ask for the country. Białowieża spans two of them.
• Worldbuilding. Decide the latitude and the rainfall and the forest decides itself. Cloud forest, taiga and rainforest are three different answers to the same question.
• Teaching what a definition does. Ask a class whether a clear-cut is a forest, then read them the FAO wording.
• Naming things. Daintree, Monteverde and Tongass are all excellent and all unclaimed.

Getting more out of the filters

• Nearly every entry reads "Name, Place", so Contains works as a country filter. Try Canada, Poland, Japan.
• Type National to separate the legal designations from the ecosystems. Everything that does not come back is a forest in the older sense.
• Type Rainforest, then remember there are rather more rainforests in the world than come back.
• Type Cloud for the cloud forests, which are the strangest ecosystem of the lot: forests that drink fog.

Questions people ask

What is the official definition of a forest?

The FAO's is land over 0.5 hectares with trees taller than 5 metres and canopy cover above 10 percent, or land whose trees can reach those thresholds, excluding land predominantly under agricultural or urban use.

Is a clear-cut still a forest?

Under the FAO definition, yes, if regeneration is expected. Temporarily unstocked land is counted as forest. So is land that has just burned.

How much of the world is forest?

4.06 billion hectares, which is 31 percent of the world's land area, by the FAO's 10 percent canopy threshold. Raise the threshold and the figure drops sharply, because savannah and dry woodland fall out of the category.

What makes a rainforest different?

Rain, mostly, and the absence of a dry season. Tropical rainforests get heavy rainfall year round, which is why they hold more species than everything else on land combined. Temperate rainforests exist too, and are wetter than people expect.

What is the taiga?

The boreal forest: a belt of conifers circling the northern hemisphere below the Arctic tundra. It is the largest land biome on the planet, and it is a biome rather than a place.

References

1. FRA 2020 terms and definitions, FAO
2. Forest resources assessment, FAO
3. SDG indicator 15.1.1 metadata, UN Statistics
4. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020
5. Canopy cover thresholds and reported forest area