Each year, AHA’s team of experts produces an annual report of deforestation risk in U.S. hardwood producing regions. The 2025 report covers 37 states and draws on the latest available annual Cropland Data Layer (CDL) which classifies land use in that year. Alongside AHA’s separate state-level legality assessments, the annual report assesses deforestation risk at county (‘micro-jurisdiction’) level. The focus of the analysis is on the risk of commodity-driven deforestation of hardwood stands, and the analysis quantifies the extent of conversion of deciduous and mixed deciduous/coniferous forest to agricultural land.
The 2025 report examines 2,615 counties in the 37 states. Of approximately 154.5 million hectares of hardwood forest in the baseline, an estimated 94,914 hectares may have been converted to agriculture over five years. This is an average of 18,983 hectares, or 0.012% of the baseline forest area, per year. Most counties fall below AHA’s risk threshold. The assessment classified 2,578 counties (98.6%) as Negligible Risk and 37 (1.4%) as Unspecified or Specified Risk. Further examination confirmed 13 of the 37 as Specified Risk. Only 12 of the higher-risk counties had reported hardwood sawlog production; together, they accounted for approximately 0.34% of the hardwood sawlog volume reported for the assessed states.
The 2025 report concludes that, in terms of volume, for every 7,400m3 of American hardwood sawlogs harvested each year, only one (1) m3 is at risk of being on forest land converted to agriculture.
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