Humankind Has Destroyed Half of all Forests: How Many Trees Are There in the World?
Geschreven op 21-9-2015 - Erik van Erne. Geplaatst in Klimaat, Natuur
A new Yale-led study has found that 9.5 billion trees are lost each year due to deforestation.
This is despite the substantial afforestation efforts of the Billion Tree Campaign, which has planted 14.2 billion trees over the past eight years.
The study, which was initiated by Plant-for-the-Planet and published September 2nd, 2015, in the journal Nature, also estimates that there are 3.04 trillion trees on Earth, about 7.5 times more than previously estimated.
But the total number of trees has plummeted by 45.8% since humans first began transforming the global landscape.
“This study (PDF) spells out that we need the greatest afforestation effort in human history” says Paulina Sanchez Espinosa (21), president of Plant-for-the-Planet from Mexico. “Each tree sequesters 10 kg of CO2 per year, which makes afforestation the cheapest, simplest to implement and the only globally scalable method of carbon capture and storage.”
A further trillion (1000 billion) trees would sequester more than 1/4 of the CO2 emissions for which humankind is responsible, currently 36 billion metric-tons. The children and youth of Plant-for-the-Planet are therefore calling for wealthy people and companies, Heads of States as well as all individuals to join the Billion Tree Campaign. “One thousand multinational corporations and billionaires planting one billion trees each, would be enough to reach our goal of 1,000 billion trees by 2020”, stated Felix Finkbeiner (17), founder of Plant-for-the-Planet from Germany.
For the first time, this study provides a scientifically proven number of trees. “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. Source: Nature
See also: The Billion Tree Campaign: New Target 18 Billion Trees in 2020 by Plant for the Planet Foundation – The Canopy Project: Planting Millions of Trees for A Billion Acts of Green – Drones Planting 1 Million Trees in the Irrawaddy River Delta in Myanmar by BioCarbon Engineering – Humankind has Destroyed Half of all Forests: How Many Trees Are There in the World? – Climate Tours in Google Earth: A Voice for Trees, by Wangari Maathai – Climate Tours in Google Earth: Mangroves of Mexico by CONABIO
