Originally Posted by
MrDDT
To OP:
Yes right now the world is lacking a lot of trees mostly because of 2 things. 1)Tree growth is turned off, in the next patch regrowth of trees and farmlands are set to be put into place. 2)The game has just been released (1.5 months ago) so everyone is going through a building phase. The areas you went around too are where most people are (starting areas around the lakes) if you go outside these areas you will start to see more trees.
Many trees are needed to build up your tribelands. So people had to cut them down, also people have been cutting them down for skill gains and other reasons. Once tree planting and regrowth is turned on, I think we will start to see a very lush land again.
Terraforming is a problem, but dont forget people can only terraform on the totem area. So they had to place a totem down to change that landscape. Some of these tribes are 100% inactive, so you will start seeing some of these areas go public once decay of totems is turned on, allowing people to reclaim the areas and fix or change them.