How Much Forest Is In Your Coffee?

India, Oct. 21 -- The first activity that many of us do in the morning when we wake up is probably head straight to the kitchen and start boiling a cup full of water for our morning pick-me-up. That smell and taste of a good cup of freshly-made coffee are both relaxing and energizing, isn't it? If this is how your routine weekday mornings are, let me tell you a bit more about my research.

Before It Reaches Your Kitchen Shelf I work on global forest change, and on most days, it is a sobering job. The world loses significant amounts of forest every year, much more than it grows back. The rates of deforestation in so-called 'deforestation hotspots' (like the Amazon basin and in South-east Asia) show yearly fluctuations but remain alarmingly h...