deforestation

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)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.”

   “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.”

2. (countable, uncountable)A transformation to eliminate intermediate data structures within a program.