New research published by Science has identified nearly 1 billion hectares of land on the globe available to be reforested. This area, equivalent to the size of the United States, could ultimately capture two-thirds of human-made carbon emissions.
According to Researcher Jean-Francois Bastin from the Institute of Integrative Biology told ABC News it’s enough to buy us about 20 years in the fight against climate change
The research is based on the measurement of the tree cover by hundreds of people in 80,000 high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth. Excluding existing trees and agricultural and urban areas, the Crowther lab found that there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares (2.2 billion acres) of canopy cover, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon in areas that would naturally support woodlands and forests.
Significantly, Australia is one of six countries that holds 50 per cent of the world’s tree planting potential, with the tropical east coast of Australia containing the most suitable area of land.
Tree planting is a climate change solution every individual can get involved in right now.
Positive Action
- Get involved in National Tree day by hosting a planting site or volunteering at a site near you. If you don’t have the space to plant there’s plenty of other ways schools, councils, communities and workplaces can get involved. For more information, visit National Tree Day.
- If you want to support National Tree Day, donate to the Seedling Bank and help our community of volunteers get plants in the ground around Australia
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Positive Environment News has been compiled using publicly available information. Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes.