Question

Suppose the acreage of forest is decreasing by 2% per year because of development. If there are currently 4,500,000 acres of forest, determine the amount of forest land after each of the following number of years?

Answer 1

See below an explanation of how to do it, as cannot directly answer question as no number of years was given...

But use:

`A=4,500,000xx(0.98)^N` Where `N` is the years.

Explanation:

Even though there's no years, I will do a demonstration of how to do it for certain years

Even though this isn't money related, I would use compound interest, where a certain percentage of a value is lost over a certain amount of time. It is repeated loss of money or other over a period of time.

`A=Pxx(1+R/100)^N`

Where `A` is the amount after the amount of time, `P` is the original amount, `R` is the rate and `N` is the number of years.

Plugging our values into the formula we get:

`A=4,500,000xx(1-2/100)^N`

As you did not state the number of years we will leave this blank for the moment. Notice that we minus as it is decreasing...

`2/100=0.02`

Therefore instead of `2/100` minus this from `1` and re-do the formula:

`A=4,500,000xx(0.98)^N`

Let's just do an example:

Someone puts `£50,000` in a bank, he gets interest of `2.5%`each year, calculate the amount he would have after `3` years:

(Focus on that it is addition as he is getting money)

Using the formula `A=P xx (1+R/100)^N` we get...

`A=£50,000xx(1+2.5/100)^3`

`2.5/100=0.025`

Therefore we add this onto `1` giving us `1.025` This gets us...

`A=£50,000 xx (1.025)^3`

Plug this in your calculator you get...

`=£53844.53125` which is rounded to `£53844.53`

Just do the exact same for your question, putting with the values I gave, just input the power as the amount of years that you want to work out.

There is your answer :)

Hope this helped!