The planet now has more trees than it did 35 years ago (2018)

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.

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.

"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...

We also use far less farmland than we did in the past, mostly due to the "green revolution" in the 1970s.

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....

that's just about the turnover period for fast-growing pine clearcuts

Wait this post was made about 10 years ago why is it being posted now?

Awesome. And remember CO2 is food for plants.

Blog post 2018, data ending 2016

Trees are awesome. Wood is probably the rarest material in the known universe :)

Didn’t read, but let me guess. We’re gaining more trees in countries like China where large scale project to prevent desertification exist or in places like Russia or Canada where warming climate is opening more space where trees can grow. All the while tropical countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia are losing tropical forest covers in ecological hotspots because of soybean or palm oil cultivation.

Tbh headlines like these do more damage to the climate change and ecological preservation conversation because they can be used to intentionally mislead what’s happening in the world.