11 ms·

The Planet Now Has More Trees Than It Did 35 Years Ago

228 points by rapnie 8y ago

zerealshadowban 8y ago
Neat. There is also vastly more plankton.
wpasc 8y ago
This seems likes good news from an environmental standpoint, but its a real shame that rainforest cover is being lost. I loved reading articles/stories about rainforests as crazy evolution-based chemistry labs that are ever engulfed in the world war of insects vs plants vs funghi vs bacteria vs viruses vs animals. Rainforests are home to some pretty amazing chemistry (and potential medicinal products, though I see society moving away from medicines being found in this capacity)
- sandworm101 8y ago
  Unless the extra trees are a symptom of a warming climate and increased CO2 levels. I'd also hazard that having more trees in the north/south, where light levels are less is not a good trade deforestation near the equator. If a tree's job is to turn CO2 into O2, we want more of them where there is the most sunshine.
  - btilly 8y ago
    This is a common misconception. A mature forest does NOT absorb CO2. It stores a bunch of carbon, but is net neutral. However when you cut down that forest, it turns into wood and a good chunk of that wood tends to turn into CO2 in one way or another in not too many years. The real "lungs of the world" are the plankton in the ocean. Endlessly absorbing CO2, sinking, and forming mud. Locking away CO2 released by natural sources such as volcanoes.
    - sandworm101 8y ago
      But this isn't about mature forests. These are new trees, still growing, that are sequestering C.
    - eric_h 8y ago
      > The real "lungs of the world" are the plankton in the ocean. Indeed, it's also mostly long dead plankton that we're burning in the form of fossil fuels.
- caymanjim 8y ago
  The developed world went through its industrial and agricultural revolutions over 100 years ago, and land use hasn't changed dramatically since then. Developing countries aren't doing anything different; they're just doing it now. Particular examples of this are Brazilian deforestation and Chinese pollution. Given what we now know about the global impact of these activities, it makes sense that the world pushes back against their development plans. Part of it is "don't make the same mistakes we did," but most of it is "there's a better way," and part of it is a realization that the world collectively needs less pollution and more trees, and since we've already chopped down our trees, we want Brazil to keep theirs for our (global) benefit. That latter point is selfish. Yes, it's good for the world as a whole, but the cost to Brazil is foregoing the benefits of exploiting their resources the same way other industrialized nations already have. The same applies to China and pollution. They're doing the same thing the US did for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The selfish part is denying these countries the right to exploit their land the way that we already have. If the rest of the world wants Brazil to stop chopping down forests, they should pay them for it.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    The impacted ecosystems are different. A more ideal solution might be to expand 'national parks' like ideas to a global scale and "purchase" the land that we as a species want to set aside as an investment in the continued stability of our ONLY presently viable planet.
    - southern_cross 8y ago
      The trouble with an idea like that is that unless there are armed "boots on the ground" actively protecting them, then those areas may just get exploited anyway, regardless of who owns them.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
It seem to be the case that we're losing the biodiversity of rainforests and natural forests, but in their place gaining palm oil plantations, and monoculture "sustainable" forestry in more temperate regions. So environmentally it's still a loss that's easy to miss, especially if people don't look past the headline numbers. At least the article points this out.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  Is there no way to win? Despite having more forests and trees, we are still in a worse state than before. If our greatest environmental efforts can at best end in failure, then those efforts are wasted and we're better off taking no action.
  - tempestn 8y ago
    I'm not following your logic. Even if the planet is in a worse state than it was, despite the increase in forest cover, it doesn't follow that we would be better off having done nothing.
  - oihoaihsfoiahsf 8y ago
    > If our greatest environmental efforts can at best end in failure, then those efforts are wasted and we're better off taking no action. ??? "I'm going to die someday, so I might as well subsist on nothing but sugar and alcohol 'til then?" Anyway, characterizing our efforts as "greatest" is far too generous. They were the efforts we gave. Not the greatest possible efforts that could be given. If biodiversity were the priority, we would have solved this problem.
  - adamc 8y ago
    No. This doesn't follow. It's like saying that if cancer treatment only extends your life by 5-10 years, it had no value. We are in a worse state not because of the additional trees, but because of other behaviors. There was never a promise that planting trees would make carbon emissions irrelevant (or plastic in the oceans or...)
bantersaurus 8y ago
China seems quite far ahead with their environmental policies.if only we also experienced the same smog to push our politicians into taking environmental politics more seriously
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  We did. And that’s why we do.
- rrmm 8y ago
  We did (to an extent) which is why we implemented the environmental laws we now have. But living so long without the severe negative environmental impacts leads us to slacken our resolve, because it's easy to think we got to this point for free.
PunchTornado 8y ago
It's good to see Europe, Russia, USA and China doing really well. But can't we put more pressure on South American? Like tariffs on their goods if they don't sort it out? Not that I like tariffs...
- pochamago 8y ago
  Just buy up the land and pay property taxes on it.
  - PunchTornado 8y ago
    but then you have to hire security and stuff. too expensive.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    That's extremely untenable from a sovereignty and foreign policy standpoint. Most countries do not like it when huge fractions of economic segments or asset classes are owned by foreign interests, and will usually start obstructing efforts through law / regulation / straight-up theft.
    - ggm 8y ago
      Isn't this model pretty much how Costa Rican preserved rainforests were funded? I get the sovereign state thing, but there are models of engagement, flawed, which are like this. My limited understanding is that its not enough to buy the land: you have to defend it from predation by outsiders/others.
      - vinceguidry 8y ago
        There's probably many many more reasons why it's a bad idea, heh. No need to argue over which one precisely is the best one.
_rpd 8y ago
Reference to actual paper ... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9.epdf?referrer_access_token=wSS7DD_27dV9u4k0XWIDZtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O4E2fKOLwTwA0mhaVJlcmkG8kN43ivDG3jHgm8DqdefC6gsxWdgQqF-pFb05tSpn1wVaC1zqJ8LvJQaH3-hJx9Whl7NaF3he985GA6hrmBhHoYy4-48q4yK93_LTicDl8e1alslZmJxMxmKHbAM35W6OMF7R2VBk-FaLeFzFce1KQtpMy3fLMIZ0TkyRZYJ774iffNWTMP_LSg4NJQOm52&tracking_referrer=news.mongabay.com https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9.epdf?refer...
_rpd 8y ago
Suggest changing link to original article ... https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/earth-has-more-trees-now-than-35-years-ago/ https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/earth-has-more-trees-now-t... In particular, the psmag.com article introduces an error in the tree canopy loss/gain graphs that swaps gross gain and net change.
- Kadin 8y ago
  I wondered if that was PSMag or the original paper doing that. It took me a while of staring at the charts to finally decide that I'm not going crazy, the legend was just wrong.
savanaly 8y ago
Is it fair to say we never had much to worry about when it comes to preserving the aspects of the environment over which property rights can be doled out? e.g. Forests, to some degree, fish in the oceans. Because once the environment can become private property the owner has all the incentive in the world to utilize it efficiently and won't over harvest it except through foolishness or lack of knowledge. But unfortunately this is not the reality when it comes to climate change, unless we gave ownership of the Earth to a despot and made it his personal property.
- Kadin 8y ago
  I don't think that's fair to say at all. Deforestation is a real problem, and this study doesn't suggest that it's not. There are still large areas of tropical forest being clear-cut, and the areas that are being reforested are not nearly as biodiverse. The property owners have no incentive to preserve biodiversity; quite the opposite. The economic incentive is to clear-cut them for lumber, then plant single-species cash crops. Fisheries are being depleted in a totally unsustainable way, and the areas and species that are well managed are in the minority. There have been some successes, e.g. North Atlantic lobster (although I don't think the uptick in lobster populations is necessarily well enough understood to be attributed to harvest limits), but the growing demand for deepwater fish and the increase in trawling is doing terrible damage to offshore ecosystems, and there is no management scheme in place for them.
beloch 8y ago
This is good news. You wouldn't know it from reading this article. The orthodoxy on environmental research and reporting is that everything must be bad news. Humans are destroying the planet and we're all doomed. The rotten thing is about this orthodox attitude is that it has created tremendous apathy. If nothing we humans do can possibly be good and doom is inevitable, why even try? Here we have a great example of nature's self-rectifying mechanisms in action. Raise global temperatures and CO2 levels and trees grow bigger in more places than before, lowering CO2 levels. It is a fundamentally good thing to see this in action and we really ought to recognize it as such. It means there's hope. If we change a little nature may pitch in too. i.e. If we can cut down on deforestation in the places where it's the worst we'll be in a situation where a significant number of new trees are growing and soaking up CO2 for several decades. Good environmental news is possible, and it doesn't have to be interpreted as meaning everything is okay and we need not do anything, as many clearly fear. The "everything is bad" orthodoxy has proven far more crippling.
- clumsysmurf 8y ago
  Seems more like a mix of good and bad news. If trees are growing where there should be snow, the suns rays are absorbed and not reflected back out to space https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shift-northern-forests-increase-global-warming/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shift-northern-fo...
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    OK, how about this idea then? "Global warming over the recent past [reference favorite timeline here] may be largely due to the extensive regrowth of previously deforested areas."
- mirimir 8y ago
  No, it's not good news. At best, it's clueless. At worst, it's propaganda. Trees are not interchangeable objects to count. What matters is not trees, but ecosystems.
- specialist 8y ago
mikehines 8y ago
Finally that’s some good news
conorh 8y ago
There is some interesting research* showing that deforested soils take more than a thousand years to rebuild their carbon sequestering ability. So even if there are more trees, we may have done long term damage to the environment: https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/users/169969-peter-douglas/posts/37781-the-ancient-maya-and-soil-carbon https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/users/169969-peter-... Paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0192-7.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0192-7.epdf * I should disclose that I know the person doing this research!
- southern_cross 8y ago
  The first thing that popped into my head when I read about the Maya thing was "Those poor folks - if only they'd made good use of fossil fuels!" And it's my understanding that the now "recovered" forest probably bears little resemblance to what was there originally.
code4tee 8y ago
This is broadly a good thing—certainly where clearcut areas have been allowed to return to forest.
warmfuzzykitten 8y ago
Really, all we have to do is stop killing them. Much of New England, now heavily forested, was cleared by early farmers.
8bitsrule 8y ago
Tree-number-wise, feels good. But in the very last paragraph: "the study confirms that some of [Earth's] most productive and biodiverse biomes—especially tropical forests and savannas—are significantly more damaged and degraded... Reforestation isn't a quick fix: "Forest soil may take centuries to recover carbon sinks damaged by deforestation." (says this report on Nature article:) https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/carbon-impact-of-ancient-maya-farming-may-still-be-felt/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/carbon-impact-of-anc...
diedyesterday 8y ago
Some of this has to be a result of higher levels of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere and it is a known effect. It's essentially plant-food in the air. Plants are growing to be bigger (fatter!) and in higher numbers. At least something good (maybe less diverse) coming out of all that CO2.

228 points by rapnie 8y ago

Neat. There is also vastly more plankton.

This seems likes good news from an environmental standpoint, but its a real shame that rainforest cover is being lost. I loved reading articles/stories about rainforests as crazy evolution-based chemistry labs that are ever engulfed in the world war of insects vs plants vs funghi vs bacteria vs viruses vs animals. Rainforests are home to some pretty amazing chemistry (and potential medicinal products, though I see society moving away from medicines being found in this capacity)

sandworm101 8y ago
Unless the extra trees are a symptom of a warming climate and increased CO2 levels. I'd also hazard that having more trees in the north/south, where light levels are less is not a good trade deforestation near the equator. If a tree's job is to turn CO2 into O2, we want more of them where there is the most sunshine.
- btilly 8y ago
  This is a common misconception. A mature forest does NOT absorb CO2. It stores a bunch of carbon, but is net neutral. However when you cut down that forest, it turns into wood and a good chunk of that wood tends to turn into CO2 in one way or another in not too many years. The real "lungs of the world" are the plankton in the ocean. Endlessly absorbing CO2, sinking, and forming mud. Locking away CO2 released by natural sources such as volcanoes.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    But this isn't about mature forests. These are new trees, still growing, that are sequestering C.
  - eric_h 8y ago
    > The real "lungs of the world" are the plankton in the ocean. Indeed, it's also mostly long dead plankton that we're burning in the form of fossil fuels.
caymanjim 8y ago
The developed world went through its industrial and agricultural revolutions over 100 years ago, and land use hasn't changed dramatically since then. Developing countries aren't doing anything different; they're just doing it now. Particular examples of this are Brazilian deforestation and Chinese pollution. Given what we now know about the global impact of these activities, it makes sense that the world pushes back against their development plans. Part of it is "don't make the same mistakes we did," but most of it is "there's a better way," and part of it is a realization that the world collectively needs less pollution and more trees, and since we've already chopped down our trees, we want Brazil to keep theirs for our (global) benefit. That latter point is selfish. Yes, it's good for the world as a whole, but the cost to Brazil is foregoing the benefits of exploiting their resources the same way other industrialized nations already have. The same applies to China and pollution. They're doing the same thing the US did for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The selfish part is denying these countries the right to exploit their land the way that we already have. If the rest of the world wants Brazil to stop chopping down forests, they should pay them for it.
- mjevans 8y ago
  The impacted ecosystems are different. A more ideal solution might be to expand 'national parks' like ideas to a global scale and "purchase" the land that we as a species want to set aside as an investment in the continued stability of our ONLY presently viable planet.
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    The trouble with an idea like that is that unless there are armed "boots on the ground" actively protecting them, then those areas may just get exploited anyway, regardless of who owns them.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

It seem to be the case that we're losing the biodiversity of rainforests and natural forests, but in their place gaining palm oil plantations, and monoculture "sustainable" forestry in more temperate regions. So environmentally it's still a loss that's easy to miss, especially if people don't look past the headline numbers. At least the article points this out.

stephengillie 8y ago
Is there no way to win? Despite having more forests and trees, we are still in a worse state than before. If our greatest environmental efforts can at best end in failure, then those efforts are wasted and we're better off taking no action.
- tempestn 8y ago
  I'm not following your logic. Even if the planet is in a worse state than it was, despite the increase in forest cover, it doesn't follow that we would be better off having done nothing.
- oihoaihsfoiahsf 8y ago
  > If our greatest environmental efforts can at best end in failure, then those efforts are wasted and we're better off taking no action. ??? "I'm going to die someday, so I might as well subsist on nothing but sugar and alcohol 'til then?" Anyway, characterizing our efforts as "greatest" is far too generous. They were the efforts we gave. Not the greatest possible efforts that could be given. If biodiversity were the priority, we would have solved this problem.
- adamc 8y ago
  No. This doesn't follow. It's like saying that if cancer treatment only extends your life by 5-10 years, it had no value. We are in a worse state not because of the additional trees, but because of other behaviors. There was never a promise that planting trees would make carbon emissions irrelevant (or plastic in the oceans or...)

bantersaurus 8y ago

China seems quite far ahead with their environmental policies.if only we also experienced the same smog to push our politicians into taking environmental politics more seriously

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
We did. And that’s why we do.
rrmm 8y ago
We did (to an extent) which is why we implemented the environmental laws we now have. But living so long without the severe negative environmental impacts leads us to slacken our resolve, because it's easy to think we got to this point for free.

PunchTornado 8y ago

It's good to see Europe, Russia, USA and China doing really well. But can't we put more pressure on South American? Like tariffs on their goods if they don't sort it out? Not that I like tariffs...

pochamago 8y ago
Just buy up the land and pay property taxes on it.
- PunchTornado 8y ago
  but then you have to hire security and stuff. too expensive.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  That's extremely untenable from a sovereignty and foreign policy standpoint. Most countries do not like it when huge fractions of economic segments or asset classes are owned by foreign interests, and will usually start obstructing efforts through law / regulation / straight-up theft.
  - ggm 8y ago
    Isn't this model pretty much how Costa Rican preserved rainforests were funded? I get the sovereign state thing, but there are models of engagement, flawed, which are like this. My limited understanding is that its not enough to buy the land: you have to defend it from predation by outsiders/others.
    - vinceguidry 8y ago
      There's probably many many more reasons why it's a bad idea, heh. No need to argue over which one precisely is the best one.

_rpd 8y ago

Reference to actual paper ... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9.epdf?referrer_access_token=wSS7DD_27dV9u4k0XWIDZtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O4E2fKOLwTwA0mhaVJlcmkG8kN43ivDG3jHgm8DqdefC6gsxWdgQqF-pFb05tSpn1wVaC1zqJ8LvJQaH3-hJx9Whl7NaF3he985GA6hrmBhHoYy4-48q4yK93_LTicDl8e1alslZmJxMxmKHbAM35W6OMF7R2VBk-FaLeFzFce1KQtpMy3fLMIZ0TkyRZYJ774iffNWTMP_LSg4NJQOm52&tracking_referrer=news.mongabay.com https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9.epdf?refer...

_rpd 8y ago

Suggest changing link to original article ... https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/earth-has-more-trees-now-than-35-years-ago/ https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/earth-has-more-trees-now-t... In particular, the psmag.com article introduces an error in the tree canopy loss/gain graphs that swaps gross gain and net change.

Kadin 8y ago
I wondered if that was PSMag or the original paper doing that. It took me a while of staring at the charts to finally decide that I'm not going crazy, the legend was just wrong.

savanaly 8y ago

Is it fair to say we never had much to worry about when it comes to preserving the aspects of the environment over which property rights can be doled out? e.g. Forests, to some degree, fish in the oceans. Because once the environment can become private property the owner has all the incentive in the world to utilize it efficiently and won't over harvest it except through foolishness or lack of knowledge. But unfortunately this is not the reality when it comes to climate change, unless we gave ownership of the Earth to a despot and made it his personal property.

Kadin 8y ago
I don't think that's fair to say at all. Deforestation is a real problem, and this study doesn't suggest that it's not. There are still large areas of tropical forest being clear-cut, and the areas that are being reforested are not nearly as biodiverse. The property owners have no incentive to preserve biodiversity; quite the opposite. The economic incentive is to clear-cut them for lumber, then plant single-species cash crops. Fisheries are being depleted in a totally unsustainable way, and the areas and species that are well managed are in the minority. There have been some successes, e.g. North Atlantic lobster (although I don't think the uptick in lobster populations is necessarily well enough understood to be attributed to harvest limits), but the growing demand for deepwater fish and the increase in trawling is doing terrible damage to offshore ecosystems, and there is no management scheme in place for them.

beloch 8y ago

This is good news. You wouldn't know it from reading this article. The orthodoxy on environmental research and reporting is that everything must be bad news. Humans are destroying the planet and we're all doomed. The rotten thing is about this orthodox attitude is that it has created tremendous apathy. If nothing we humans do can possibly be good and doom is inevitable, why even try? Here we have a great example of nature's self-rectifying mechanisms in action. Raise global temperatures and CO2 levels and trees grow bigger in more places than before, lowering CO2 levels. It is a fundamentally good thing to see this in action and we really ought to recognize it as such. It means there's hope. If we change a little nature may pitch in too. i.e. If we can cut down on deforestation in the places where it's the worst we'll be in a situation where a significant number of new trees are growing and soaking up CO2 for several decades. Good environmental news is possible, and it doesn't have to be interpreted as meaning everything is okay and we need not do anything, as many clearly fear. The "everything is bad" orthodoxy has proven far more crippling.

clumsysmurf 8y ago
Seems more like a mix of good and bad news. If trees are growing where there should be snow, the suns rays are absorbed and not reflected back out to space https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shift-northern-forests-increase-global-warming/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shift-northern-fo...
- southern_cross 8y ago
  OK, how about this idea then? "Global warming over the recent past [reference favorite timeline here] may be largely due to the extensive regrowth of previously deforested areas."
mirimir 8y ago
No, it's not good news. At best, it's clueless. At worst, it's propaganda. Trees are not interchangeable objects to count. What matters is not trees, but ecosystems.
specialist 8y ago

mikehines 8y ago

Finally that’s some good news

conorh 8y ago

There is some interesting research* showing that deforested soils take more than a thousand years to rebuild their carbon sequestering ability. So even if there are more trees, we may have done long term damage to the environment: https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/users/169969-peter-douglas/posts/37781-the-ancient-maya-and-soil-carbon https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/users/169969-peter-... Paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0192-7.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0192-7.epdf * I should disclose that I know the person doing this research!

southern_cross 8y ago
The first thing that popped into my head when I read about the Maya thing was "Those poor folks - if only they'd made good use of fossil fuels!" And it's my understanding that the now "recovered" forest probably bears little resemblance to what was there originally.

code4tee 8y ago

This is broadly a good thing—certainly where clearcut areas have been allowed to return to forest.

warmfuzzykitten 8y ago

Really, all we have to do is stop killing them. Much of New England, now heavily forested, was cleared by early farmers.

8bitsrule 8y ago

Tree-number-wise, feels good. But in the very last paragraph: "the study confirms that some of [Earth's] most productive and biodiverse biomes—especially tropical forests and savannas—are significantly more damaged and degraded... Reforestation isn't a quick fix: "Forest soil may take centuries to recover carbon sinks damaged by deforestation." (says this report on Nature article:) https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/carbon-impact-of-ancient-maya-farming-may-still-be-felt/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/carbon-impact-of-anc...

diedyesterday 8y ago

Some of this has to be a result of higher levels of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere and it is a known effect. It's essentially plant-food in the air. Plants are growing to be bigger (fatter!) and in higher numbers. At least something good (maybe less diverse) coming out of all that CO2.