deforestation

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The 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.

2. 2
   noun

   the removal of trees

3. 3
   noun

   the state of being clear of trees

4. 4
   noun

   A transformation to eliminate intermediate data structures within a program.

Etymology

From deforest + -ation. First attested in 1870.