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How Many Trees Does Earth Have? New Study Yields Big Surprise
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/three-trillion-trees-on-earth_55e84ff3e4b0aec9f35629c1
How Many Trees Does Earth Have? New Study Yields Big Surprise
"We were astonished, simply because this is such an astronomical number."
Jacqueline Howard
Associate Science Editor, The Huffington Post
Posted: 09/03/2015 05:40 PM EDT
If you're having trouble seeing the forest for the trees, maybe it's because there are so many trees out there. A new study puts the number at 3.04 trillion trees -- a number that's much, much higher than what scientists had expected.
"We were astonished, simply because this is such an astronomical number," Dr. Tom Crowther, a post-doctoral fellow at Yale University's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the leader of the international team of scientists who did the study, told The Huffington Post in an email. "The previous estimate, which was solely based on satellite information, was approximately 400 billion, so we were surprised to find that our final number had 12 zeroes after it. The scale of this number really puts a lot of things in context."
<snip>
"The information that we provide is important because it provides meaningful numbers that can be used by scientists, policy makers and environmental practitioners in order to make decisions about the world," Crowther said in the email. "Trees are some of the most prominent organisms on Earth and they characterize every terrestrial ecosystem that they are found in. Understanding their distribution is important for understanding the global ecosystem."
The study was published online in the journal Nature on September 2, 2015.
<snip>
How Many Trees Does Earth Have? New Study Yields Big Surprise
"We were astonished, simply because this is such an astronomical number."
Jacqueline Howard
Associate Science Editor, The Huffington Post
Posted: 09/03/2015 05:40 PM EDT
If you're having trouble seeing the forest for the trees, maybe it's because there are so many trees out there. A new study puts the number at 3.04 trillion trees -- a number that's much, much higher than what scientists had expected.
"We were astonished, simply because this is such an astronomical number," Dr. Tom Crowther, a post-doctoral fellow at Yale University's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the leader of the international team of scientists who did the study, told The Huffington Post in an email. "The previous estimate, which was solely based on satellite information, was approximately 400 billion, so we were surprised to find that our final number had 12 zeroes after it. The scale of this number really puts a lot of things in context."
<snip>
"The information that we provide is important because it provides meaningful numbers that can be used by scientists, policy makers and environmental practitioners in order to make decisions about the world," Crowther said in the email. "Trees are some of the most prominent organisms on Earth and they characterize every terrestrial ecosystem that they are found in. Understanding their distribution is important for understanding the global ecosystem."
The study was published online in the journal Nature on September 2, 2015.
<snip>
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How Many Trees Does Earth Have? New Study Yields Big Surprise (Original Post)
bananas
Sep 2015
OP
bananas
(27,509 posts)1. inspired by the Billion Tree Campaign
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/02/scientists-discover-that-the-world-contains-dramatically-more-trees-than-previously-thought/
Scientists discover that the world contains dramatically more trees than previously thought
By Chris Mooney September 2
<snip>
Crowther, the lead researcher, said his work was partly inspired by the Billion Tree Campaign, which the United Nations Environment Programme created in 2006 and is now run by the Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation.
They want to generate forests on a global scale, says Crowther. But they had absolutely no baseline information about how many trees they needed to plant to do that.
The new research suggests that massively more trees need to be planted than previously thought but Crowther said he thinks that will only inspire activists to redouble their efforts.
<snip>
Scientists discover that the world contains dramatically more trees than previously thought
By Chris Mooney September 2
<snip>
Crowther, the lead researcher, said his work was partly inspired by the Billion Tree Campaign, which the United Nations Environment Programme created in 2006 and is now run by the Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation.
They want to generate forests on a global scale, says Crowther. But they had absolutely no baseline information about how many trees they needed to plant to do that.
The new research suggests that massively more trees need to be planted than previously thought but Crowther said he thinks that will only inspire activists to redouble their efforts.
<snip>
Billion Tree Campaign:
http://www.un.org/climatechange/blog/2014/08/plant-planet-billion-tree-campaign/