How Many Trees Are There on Earth?  The Answer is Going to Surprise You

Big forests still make up a sizable amount of the world's landmass, despite the alarming rate of deforestation. 

Forests and woods can be found in many of the world's various biomes and environments, aside from cold tundra and deserts.

But there is one subject that scientists have been attempting to address for a very long time: the number of trees on Earth?

 Calculating this amount—even a rough estimate—is crucial to understanding how much oxygen the world's trees produce and how much carbon dioxide they sequester overall. 

 Over the years, numerous scientific investigations have calculated that there are approximately a few hundred billion trees worldwide.

However, the most recent analysis, which was published in the Nature journal in 2015, concluded that there are roughly 3.04 trillion trees on Earth using revised estimation methodology. For every human on the earth, there are around 422 trees. Due to modifications in the recording and measurement of forest-related satellite data for the 2015 study—including accounting for forest density—this value is approximately eight times greater than earlier estimates.

Massive and dense forests only cover a small portion of the earth, despite the fact that trees may be found throughout the majority of the planet. 

According to a 2015 study, Brazil has 302 billion trees, much of which are found in the enormous Amazon Rainforest, while Russia's huge, sweeping forests are home to about a fifth of all trees on Earth. 

About 1.3 trillion trees can be found in tropical and subtropical forests worldwide, many of which are found in the enormous equatorial rainforests of South America, Asia, and Africa. 

However, some 660 billion grow in temperate climatic zones, while 740 billion flourish in the vast boreal forests of northern Europe, Asia, and North America.

The overall number of trees has been greatly decreased by both historical and current deforestation. It is estimated that there were about 6 trillion trees on Earth 12,000 years ago, before both agriculture and human civilization emerged. 

Since then, there has been a notable decrease worldwide, particularly as a result of the growth of agriculture following the end of the last Ice Age. 

Regretfully, the removal of trees from the ground continues to happen quickly. According to a 2015 Nature study, an estimated 15 billion trees are felled year, many of which are not replaced. By 2050, there will only be 2.5 trillion trees on the planet at that rate.

What is the number of tree species in the world?

The largest forest database in the world was unveiled by experts on Monday. More than 44 million individual trees from more than 100,000 locations across 90 nations are included in the database. Researchers have calculated that there are roughly 73,300 tree species on Earth because of this enormous amount of data.

Nonetheless, efforts have been made recently to slow down the rate of tree loss, either by starting tree-planting programs or by preventing deforestation. 

For instance, numerous nations, such as Ethiopia, China, and the United Arab Emirates, have started extensive tree-planting initiatives. 

7 billion new trees were planted worldwide in 2019 alone, significantly reducing the amount of trees that were felled that year. 

The total number of trees on Earth will eventually stabilize if this trend persists and more trees are planted annually.