China and India Lead the Way in Greening (nasa.gov)

hackingbear writes: The world is literally a greener place than it was twenty years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage. A new study shows that China and India -- the world's most populous countries -- are leading the increase in greening on land. The effect comes mostly from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries. Ranga Myneni of Boston University and colleagues first detected the greening phenomenon in satellite data from the mid-1990s, but they did not know whether human activity was a chief cause. The research team found that global green leaf area has increased by 5 percent since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25 percent of that gain came in China. "China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9 percent of the planet's land area covered in vegetation," said lead author Chi Chen of Boston University. "That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation." China's outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part from its programs to conserve and expand forests (about 42 percent of the greening contribution). These programs were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution, and climate change.

Comments

China is reclaiming desert

[drinkypoo]

China is reclaiming desert with grid plantings.

My understanding is that the USA has at least as many forested acres as ever, but a lot less biomass, and a lot of dead trees. Old growth is taller so it slows wind down more, and it's also more massive so it fixes more carbon. (Trees only grow from a thin layer beneath the bark, and the rate of growth is limited by photosynthesis, with larger trees able to do more of it because they have more leaf area with which to receive insolation.)

Is there a biomass index?

This is why change needn't be doom and gloom

[Dasher42]

We have absolutely got to do something about climate change. Most of what we've got to do would also make the world a lot better in sundry other ways.

If we helped the landscape keep multiple stories of vegetation, and worked out ways to scale orchards designed the same way, it would make for great resistance to drought and a stable food supply, and over time, correct for this spike in greenhouse gasses.

Entire horticultural and early agriculture civilizations have been founded not on controlling the landscape's entire harvest, but on enriching it and reaping the surplus. In this way of life, economy and environment are not at all at odds. In fact, they are interdependent. You can look at terra preta and its history in the Amazon basin for an example of a long-term, large-scale win-win scenario. http://news.cornell.edu/storie...

If you want to see what is happening in China, watch this video, "The Lessons of the Loess Plateau": https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Even if you don't exactly agree with *how* they got it done, the results for the landscape and the prosperity of the people there speak for themselves. Start asking how your local economic and political systems can start to do right by the soil too.

that is good to see

[WindBourne]

We have Brazil clear cutting their forest so as to supply Europe with Beef, and CHina with exotic woods.
Then we have the west which has already done a number on our forest and are not replanting fast enough.
So, it is good to actually see both China and India showing the rest of the world what needs to happen.
It will not help that much with the CO2, but it will help absorb pollution, etc.

Re:The US is way behind ..

[dryeo]

Sure, we reached peak per capita CO2 production with nowhere to go but down while China and especially India are still relatively low per capita.
The real problem is how much CO2 we produce compared to the Vatican if we're going to compare countries without considering size or population.