Earth Home To 3 Trillion Trees, Half As Many As When Human Civilization Arose

sciencehabit writes: Earth today supports more than 3 trillion trees—eight times as many as we thought a decade ago. But that number is rapidly shrinking, according to a global tree survey released today (abstract). We are losing 15 billion trees a year to toilet paper, timber, farmland expansion, and other human needs. So even though the total count is large, the decline is "a cause for concern," says Tom Spies, a forest ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Corvallis, Oregon, who was not involved with the work.

Comments

Our previous numbers were completely wrong.

[halivar]

But these new numbers are completely right, and actionable. I am inspired with confidence.

Bad article.

[pubwvj]

This /. article totally fails to cover the reality that the number of trees has gone up (entire planet covered) and down (almost no trees in ice ages) over the course of the Earth's life. That's how life is.

Re:Three Seashells

[Nethemas the Great]

Not sure about the seashells, however I wonder if there might not be benefit in using say bamboo instead of traditional trees for paper products such as bumwad. It grows substantially faster and by my reckoning would translate into a smaller footprint required to produce.

Re:Three Seashells

[lgw]

Not sure about the seashells, however I wonder if there might not be benefit in using say bamboo instead of traditional trees for paper products such as bumwad. It grows substantially faster and by my reckoning would translate into a smaller footprint required to produce.

No, it's not even relevant. As much as hippies like to pretend there's something you can do in your home to help the environment, this is not a US problem. Forest coverage in the US has grown substantially since the 50s, as crop yields increase there is simply less farmland, and more forest.

Almost all paper used in the US comes from tree farms, which are just a different kind of cropland, raised and harvested on a longer cycle than corn, but still a normal-ish cash crop.

At this point, increased paper use in the US likely increases forest coverage, as more land is used for tree farms to meet demand.

Most forest loss is simply not about paper use, but about clearing land for people to live and (mostly) farm, and we've seen that the pendulum eventually swings the other way, with high-tech farming taking so much less land.