The planet has more trees now than 100 years ago. Due to the industrial scaling of tree harvesting in the decades leading to the 1920's boom, There were an estimated 750 billion trees worldwide in the 1920s. Since then, and with planting for harvest schemes, we now have approximately 3.04 trillion trees in the world.
Right now, just over 3 trillion trees are growing on our planet. Every year, over 15 billion of those trees are felled or lost to natural disasters. At this rate, earth's last tree will fall in roughly 200 years.
But adding in gains, the planet's total area of tree cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers, or 7.1 percent, from 31 million to 33 million square kilometers.
There are about 24 billion standard trees in Australia. These trees have a trunk diameter of 30 centimetres and stand approximately 15 metres tall.
Russia is home to the largest area of forest – 815 million hectares. Brazil, the United States, Canada, China, Australia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo also have a largest forest area – more than 100 million hectares each.
Australia has about 3% of the world's forest area, and globally is the country with the seventh largest forest area.
According to the FAO, Nigeria has the world's highest deforestation rate of primary forests. It has lost more than half of its primary forest in the last five years. The causes cited are logging, subsistence agriculture, and the collection of fuelwood. Almost 90% of West Africa's rainforest has been destroyed.
Most of the Gondwanan forests were gone by 2 million years ago, but there remain some isolated remnants. These include the cool temperate rainforests of eastern Australia, from Tasmania to the high mountains of New South Wales and Queensland.
Australia has 125 million hectares of forest, which is 16 per cent of Australia's land area.
Hobart is the highest ranking capital city in terms of the proportion of tree canopy to other kinds of ground cover. Hobart boasts 59% tree canopy cover. By comparison, Adelaide has the lowest proportion of tree canopy among Australia's capitals with 27%.
Officially, the oldest tree on Earth is Methuselah, a bristlecone pine of the species Pinus longaeva in the Inyo National Forest of California that is at least 4,789 years old, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
As much as half of all vegetated land is greener today, and remarkably, only 4% of land has become browner. Our research shows this change has been driven by human activities, particularly the rising concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere.
Trees have only been growing for 10% of our earth's history. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, but larger plants didn't appear until 420 million years ago and it took even longer for trees more than 3 feet tall to evolve.
The surface layer of the ocean is teeming with photosynthetic plankton. Though they're invisible to the naked eye, they produce more oxygen than the largest redwoods. Scientists estimate that roughly half of the oxygen production on Earth comes from the ocean.
On a mission to plant 1 trillion trees by 2050 | Tree-Nation - Project's updates.
If forests are cleared, or even disturbed, they release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Forest loss and damage is the cause of around 10% of global warming. There's simply no way we can fight the climate crisis if we don't stop deforestation.
The Huon pine is Australia's oldest living tree and is one of the oldest living organisms on earth. Individuals have been known to reach an age of 3,000 years. Fossil records from a tree found in a boggy area in the south west of Tasmania were dated at 3,462 years!
Western Australia
As well as land clearing, Western Australia's forests are under threat from climate change. The southwest of Western Australia has been experiencing a long-term climate shift since the 1970s, which researchers have attributed to historical deforestation resulting in decreased rainfall.
The primary motivator for land clearing in Australia is agricultural production, especially livestock. Where soil fertility and rainfall allow, the clearing of land allows for increased agricultural production and increase in land values.
Thus, most land clearing occurred in southeastern Australia from the turn of the 19th century to the mid-20th century. In New South Wales, e.g. most deforestation occurred between 1892 and 1921, mainly from the rapid proliferation of the wheat and sheep industries (Norton 1996).
Rainforests covered most of Australia for much of the 40 million years after its separation from Gondwana. However, these rainforests contracted as climatic conditions changed and the continent drifted northwards.
The Rainforest native forest type is found in the Northern Territory and all states except South Australia (Map 1). Two million hectares (55 per cent) are in Queensland and 0.7 million hectares (20 per cent) are in Tasmania. Australia has many types of rainforest, varying with rainfall and latitude.
Although one part of the loss of tree cover is due to wildfires, shifting agriculture, and forestry, which provoked only temporary deforestation, a larger part of the loss of tree cover is driven by urbanisation and commodity-driven logging, resulting in permanent deforestation.
Qatar- the true desert
Qatar is rich; Qatar is safe; Qatar owns the world's greatest airline, and Qatar is home to a large number of skyscrapers. But sadly, this opulent country has no trees.
Nigeria, Indonesia top deforestation list, China lowest | Reuters.