Tree
Trees are landforms in Factorio. They can be mined for Raw wood. Trees are obstacles to construction and must be cleared to provide building space, but they also reduce Pollution, so take care not to remove more than necessary.
Good methods to get rid of trees
- Mining with Iron or Steel axes (*)
- Having construction robots harvest them using a Deconstruction planner (*)
- Using grenades to blow them up
- Using poison to kill them
- Knocking them down by driving a Tank over them
- Shooting swaths of trees with a Shotgun or Combat shotgun
(*) Useable to collect raw wood. All other methods just destroy the tree.
There are more methods, but these have a good ratio of 'tech vs. trees per minute'.
Collecting Wood
Raw wood can be collected by chopping down a Dead Tree or a Big Tree. Dead Trees will give 1 raw wood and Big Trees will give 5. Dead Trees have a mining time of 1 and Big Trees have a mining time of 2.
Although collection of raw wood is easy to do, there is currently no way to completely automate the collection of raw wood, or replant it. However wood processing is planned, as discussed here.
Pollution removal
Trees remove small amounts of pollution in their area. The pollution caused by a Stone furnace, for example, can be removed by sixty live trees.
For a full list of pollution removal rates, see Pollution_Production#Trees.