Trees in the world was on the order of magnitude greater than previously thought

I remember, as a child, when you get into the woods, wondering: "How much is in the forest of trees?" Counted them I could not but think that lesozagotavlivayuschie companies must somehow estimate the number of trees on the site - for example, multiply the average density in the area.

Calculate the number of trees in a large country - an order of magnitude more difficult, and around the world - and even harder, because the density of different forest is different, and even the best satellite images show you only the green carpet of leaves. Of course, satellite images helped scientists still roughly estimate the wealth of our planet. For example, the number of trees in the whole world, until recently, to these images was estimated at $ 400 billion.



But recently, scientists from universities and institutes from 15 countries (including the Russian scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Productivity of Forests) under the leadership of the ecologist Thomas Crowther (Thomas Crowther) finished a great job of handling huge amounts of data from around the world about the real density of forests in different parts of it. The density of forest was calculated simply - by hand. This was done by a variety of environmental institutions and organizations, and share the results of the Internet.

As a result, scientists got the first detailed map of the global forests, taking into account not only the area of ​​forested land, but also the data on the density of undergrowth. It turned out that the trees on the planet almost 8 times more than previously: about 3 040 billion, or just over 3 trillion.

"Not that we have opened new trees - explains Crowther. - We have added another layer of information that allowed to review the previous assessment ».

Journal Nature has prepared a short video, which shows a beautiful visualization of the data - "hairy" earth ball. The height of the bar indicates the density of the woods at this point.



On the one hand, 3 trillion - a lot. In every living person in the world accounting for 422 of the tree. On the other - the number of trees each year because of the harvest is reduced by $ 10 billion. 12,000 years ago, when the great civilizations did not exist, the trees on the planet were about 2 times more than today. "The scale of human activities affect", - says Crowther.

The forests with the greatest density located in North America, Scandinavia and Russia. In total, they contain 24% of all the trees of the planet. And most of all the area occupied by tropical and subtropical forests, which grows 43% of all the trees of the Earth.

It is known that 50% of all the planet's oxygen is produced by the trees, and the other 50% - plankton. With the new data, scientists will be able to better estimate the contribution of forests to the overall planetary ecosystem and the possibilities of nature that people can use without disturbing the ecological balance.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/261364/