Global tree canopy cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers (865,000 square miles) between 1982 and 2016, reports a new study in Nature. These new findings contradict earlier studies that reported a continuing net loss of forest cover.
Researchers using satellite data tracked the changes in various land covers to find that gains in forest area in the temperate, subtropical, and boreal climatic zones are offsetting declines in the tropics. In addition, forest area is expanding even as areas of bare ground and short vegetation are shrinking. Furthermore, forests in montane regions are expanding as climate warming enables trees to grow higher up on mountains.
Tree canopy in Europe, including European Russia, has increased by 35 percent—the greatest gain among all continents. The researchers attribute much of that increase to the “natural afforestation on abandoned agricultural land,” which has been “a common process in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
Full story at Reason Online
The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9
Global land change from 1982 to 2016
Abstract
Land change is a cause and consequence of global environmental change. Changes in land use and land cover considerably alter the Earth’s energy balance and biogeochemical cycles, which contributes to climate change and—in turn—affects land surface properties and the provision of ecosystem services. However, quantification of global land change is lacking. Here we analyse 35 years’ worth of satellite data and provide a comprehensive record of global land-change dynamics during the period 1982–2016. We show that—contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally—tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km2 (+7.1% relative to the 1982 level). This overall net gain is the result of a net loss in the tropics being outweighed by a net gain in the extratropics. Global bare ground cover has decreased by 1.16 million km2 (−3.1%), most notably in agricultural regions in Asia. Of all land changes, 60% are associated with direct human activities and 40% with indirect drivers such as climate change. Land-use change exhibits regional dominance, including tropical deforestation and agricultural expansion, temperate reforestation or afforestation, cropland intensification and urbanization. Consistently across all climate domains, montane systems have gained tree cover and many arid and semi-arid ecosystems have lost vegetation cover. The mapped land changes and the driver attributions reflect a human-dominated Earth system. The dataset we developed may be used to improve the modelling of land-use changes, biogeochemical cycles and vegetation–climate interactions to advance our understanding of global environmental change.
Declining forest cover in the Western US is from fires.
Is it? This year’s forest fires, for all of their publicity and problems and expense, are very small areas compared to the tens of millions of sq kilometers of living forests.
Last year wild fires of all types burned about ten million acres, to include grasslands. Forests in the US cover some 750 million acres, a figure which has remained stable for going on a century. The lowpoint was in the 1920s.
In 1930 and ’31, around 52 million acres burned.
https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
Forest fires only count if you can blame them on some despised political or business interest managed by people who are still alive. For propaganda purposes, none of the fires you mention from the past ever happened. It’s as if they never existed.
Never mind that the species composition of North America west of the Mississippi River, for both flora and fauna, has largely been shaped by repeated fire for millions of years, since well before Homo sapiens crossed over here from Asia on the Alaska-Siberia land bridge. Well before Homo sapiens evolved in East Africa, if you really want to get down to it.
For propaganda purposes, none of those geologic or biologic events existed, either. Acknowledging the Alaska land bridge would mean sea levels have risen and fallen without contemporary enviros’ advice or consent. NO! NO! NO! Admitting that modern man hasn’t ruined everything might throw thousands of doomsayers, quack remedy peddlers, and tort lawyers out of work.
We can’t allow THAT!
This is almost the worst news I’ve ever read. More tree growth? Nature reclaiming abandoned farmland? AHHHHH!!!!!! We’re verging on an incipient shortage of semi-desert. I can just FEEL it. Before you know it, there’s going to be too many leafy glades, too many babbling brooks, romping rodents, and chirping birds. And dire shortages of scorched earth, with only a few remaining rattlesnakes skulking about here and there.
Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
You got it, you got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
We got it, we got it
There was a shopping mall
Now it’s all covered with flowers
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Years ago
I was an angry young man
And I’d pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it’s only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we’d start over
But I guess I was wrong
Once there were parking lots
Now it’s a peaceful oasis
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
You got it, you got it
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
You got it, you got it
I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
You got it, you got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
You got it, you got it
This was a discount store,
Now it’s turned into a cornfield
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Don’t leave me stranded here
I can’t get used to this lifestyle
Wait a minute, I’ll go get my bongos and you can recite that with accompaniment.
We can rest assured that within a couple of months, indefatigable climate “scientists” will release a new study that shows this silver lining to have its very own cloud. It will (of course) be based on modelling without the use of actual data, and will look something like this:
“yes, there are more trees, but models show they contain less wood.”
Prophets of imminent disaster will be able to relax as another apparent benefit of climate change turns out to have been fabricated by denialists funded by the fossil fuel industry.
Not only less wood, but less sap and less of anything that might be useful.
But indubitably more biomass, since it’s hard to deny photosynthesis.
More CO2 inevitably means more glucose, basis of the terrestrial food chain.
Smart Rock
“yes, there are more trees, but models show they contain less wood.”
Today’s softwood lumber is growing so fast … (Queue, “How fast is it growing?”, from audience) … That the wood and construction engineers latest official strength tables list the new lumber as weaker than the older, slow-growing lumber!”
No matter how good the news might be, accentuate the negative.
You had the audience line up before they were cued as to what to say?
Maybe it’s also because people have stopped randomly clearing land just to randomly clear land?
What I remember from my childhood is that a land agency would buy tree and brush covered land then clear it off to try to re-sell it to developers immaterial of where it was because the only way to get a developer interested was to knock it all down, grub it all up and burn it off.
They still do that. Unfortunately.
The first thing I’ve done with every house I’ve owned is start planting trees.
MORE trees with MORE CO2 poisoning the atmosphere?
Why, its almost as if CO2 isn’t a poison at all.
Or did I wake up in a Seinfield-ish backwards episode or something?
“The dataset we developed may be used to improve the modelling of land-use changes, biogeochemical cycles and vegetation–climate interactions to advance our understanding of global environmental change.”
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What for – when there’s
Researchers using satellite data track[ing] the changes in various land covers to find that gains in forest area in the temperate, subtropical, and boreal climatic zones are offsetting declines in the tropics.