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 a total of 134 million hectares of forest, which is equivalent to 17% of Australia's land area.
Calculations are based on 746,677 hectares of deforestation and land clearing in 2018-19 across Australia, 2,045 hectares per day, 85 hectares per hour, 1.42 hectares per minute.
More trees now than ever
Worldwide tree cover has grown by 2.24 million square kilometers — the size of Texas and Alaska combined — in the last 35 years, according to a paper in the science journal “Nature.”
The Earth has become five percent greener in 20 years. In total, the increase in leaf area over the past two decades corresponds to an area as large as the Amazon rainforests.
In just 40 years, a forest area the size of Europe has gone. Half of the world's rainforest has been destroyed in just one century. If we don't act and the current rates of deforestation continue, the world's rainforests will be gone in 100 years.
Arid today, Australia was once covered by lush forests, according to new research (Adobe Stock). For decades, paleobotanist David Greenwood has collected fossil plants from Australia – some so well preserved it's hard to believe they're millions of years old.
The Queensland and New South Wales governments implemented bans on land clearing during the 1990s and early 2000s. Australia remains a deforestation front, the only developed nation to do so.
Image by Author. According to this calculated data, in the area we performed our study on, 3522.27 square kilometres of forests or healthy vegetation got deforested by bushfires or other reasons.
Changes in the Last Hundred Years
The U.S. has been steadily adding back forests since the 1940s. According to The North American Forest Commission, we have two-thirds of the trees that we had in the year 1600. But the news isn't all good – cities in the US have been quickly losing critical urban forests.
Leafy subtropical Brisbane led the field, boasting the greenest populated suburbs of any Australian capital city. More than 79% of people in Greater Brisbane enjoy life in suburbs with total tree cover greater than 20%.
How Many Trees Were There 100 Years Ago? #2. 100 Years ago, the US had only about 70 million trees. Back then, the US had approximately 70 million trees, because the late 1910s witnessed an exponential growth of the timber industry as a result of the rapid developments in the recreation and construction industry.
According to the science journal Nature, approximately 42 million trees are cut down each day (or 15 billion trees each year). Thomas Crowther of the Institute of Ecology, Wageningen, Netherlands, who conducted this research emphasised how the “scale of human impact” on global tree destruction is “astonishing”.
Rubber, sugar and mining are also linked to deforestation. In Australia, agricultural expansion, particularly for beef cattle production, is the major driver of tree-clearing.
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.
Human-driven and natural loss of trees—deforestation—affects wildlife, ecosystems, weather patterns, and even the climate. Forests cover about 30 percent of the planet's land mass, but humans are cutting them down, clearing these essential habitats on a massive scale.
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.
Based on their observations, the researchers estimate that it should take about 21 years for the Australian ecosystem to soak up all the carbon it lost in the 2019-20 bush fires. That's under average conditions. In a cooler, wetter climate, it could be done in a decade or so.
As Australia drifted northwards, dramatic changes in climate occurred and plant and animal life adapted to new environmental conditions. About 12 million years ago, Australia became drier and cooler. Gradually grasslands and woodlands replaced the dense Gondwana rainforests.
A single mature tree, meanwhile, may take in about 50 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. At this rate, it would take 640 trees per person to account for all American emissions, which adds up to more than 200 billion trees.
Contrary to long-held misconceptions, trees never stop growing during their lifespans, a new study has found. In fact, as they age, their growth accelerates, even after they've reached massive sizes.
After studying more than 30 years worth of satellite images, a team of researchers concluded that global tree cover had increased by 7%, or 864,868 square miles, approximately the combined size of Alaska and Texas.