Earth Has More Trees Now Than 35 Years Ago—But Tropical Forests Are Vanishing
The Planet Now Has More Trees Than It Did 35 Years Ago
A new study in Nature reveals that global tree cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers since 1982—an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined—thanks to regrowth in temperate regions and massive planting in China. But the satellite data also shows severe losses in tropical forests, with Brazil losing more than the next four countries combined. The findings challenge FAO's deforestation estimates, highlighting the crucial difference between tree cover and natural forest.
A global net gain in tree canopy contradicts current understanding of long-term forest area change.
- makeitdouble
I think most people reading a headline about tree count would care primarily about deforestation and loss of habitat of indigenous species.
This article isn't about that, and explicitely states it doesn't touch deforestation per se, just sheer tree count, including production targeted tree farms.
TFA:
> While the classification may seem simplistic, powerful conclusions can be drawn from the data, including assessing agricultural expansion, climate-driven expansion and contraction of ecosystems, and forest clearing and recovery.
- bluGill
There are certainly more trees where I lived than there were a hundred years ago, but there are also more trees than there would have been a thousand years ago. I live in an area that should be natural prairie and humans have planted a lot more trees than the ecosystem would support in a natural situation.
I don't know if this is good or bad from an environment situation, but it is a part of a reason I am suspicious of claims that more trees are good.
- smallerize
"Deforestation and degradation rates remained stubbornly high in 2024, pushing the world even further off track from the shared goal of halting and reversing forest loss by 2030." https://forestdeclaration.org/resources/forest-declaration-a...
- hunterpayne
We also use far less farmland than we did in the past, mostly due to the "green revolution" in the 1970s.
- bmitc
Trees alone aren't enough. For example, ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest are highly balanced ecosystems that are in a perpetual recursive loop. You can't tear them down and then rebuild them by just planting trees. The rainfall the Amazon gets is itself generated by the canopied rainforest. And you can't bring back all the diversity of life that gets lost.
And this goes for any other ecosystem.
And the staggering statistic is that only 30% of the Earth is covered by forest now, a drop from 60% prior to humans going nuts.
Here's also an article that provides some counter arguments to the original paper: https://www.weforum.org/stories/nature-and-biodiversity/plan....