Earth Home to "Three Trillion" Trees- Seven Times More Than Previously Believed
Strangely, new research shows that there are seven-and-a-half times more trees on Earth than it was believed to be. While researchers had once thought that there were only about 400 billion trees on Earth, which works out to be about 61 per person, scientists have worked out a new measure of 3.04 trillion trees, working to just about 422 trees per person, Yale University reported.
Yet, about 46 per cent of trees have been wiped out since the dawn of human civilization.
The survey and assessment of the scientists was very comprehensive, employing "satellite imagery, forest inventories, and supercomputer technologies," which has given a sweep of the existing information.
"Trees are among the most prominent and critical organisms on Earth, yet we are only recently beginning to comprehend their global extent and distribution," said Thomas Crowther, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and lead author of the study . "They store huge amounts of carbon, are essential for the cycling of nutrients, for water and air quality, and for countless human services. Yet you ask people to estimate, within an order of magnitude, how many trees there are and they don't know where to begin. I don't know what I would have guessed, but I was certainly surprised to find that we were talking about trillions."
Tree density was intense in the boreal forests at the sub-arctic regions of Russia, Scandinavia and North America, but the larger tree cover is in the tropics, in which 43 per cent of the world's trees are found.
Why has tree loss been so extensive? The causes are staring at us in the face---human activity, espeically historical land use decisions have impacted natural ecosystems, according to hngn.
"We've nearly halved the number of trees on the planet, and we've seen the impacts on climate and human health as a result," Crowther said. "This study highlights how much more effort is needed if we are to restore healthy forests worldwide."
The research was published in the journal Nature.
