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New estimates suggest that planet Earth is home to eight times as many trees as previously thought.
When faced with deforestation statistics that seem daunting, the fact that there are 422 trees per person on Earth sounds a bit more reassuring. But is it?
On Wednesday, researchers published the most comprehensive assessment of global tree populations ever conducted, revealing findings that blew previous estimates out of the water.
Prior to the Yale-led study, Earth was believed to be home to 400 billion trees, but the new estimate is nearly eight times higher – 3.04 trillion. Researchers arrived at this estimate based on data collected from satellite imagery and ground-based tree density estimates from more than 400,000 locations worldwide.
But while this magnitude of newfound trees sounds promising, the reality is actually not as bright. “The number of trees has fallen by about 46 percent since the start of human civilization,” said Yale University ecologist Thomas Crowther, lead author of the study, in an interview with Reuters. “Each year there is a gross loss of 15 billion trees and a net loss of 10 billion.”