An international team of scientists including from the University of Adelaide have discovered 467 million hectares of previously unreported forest – an area equivalent to 60% of the size of Australia, and increasing current estimates of global forest cover by 10%.
Published today in Science, the scientists say that not only will the new finding help dramatically improve the accuracy of global carbon modelling, it has also revealed the true potential in forest cover of the world’s drylands and may lead to new opportunities for mitigation of climate change through improved conservation and restoration in dryland habitats.
Led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), teams of scientists and students from 15 organisations around the world carried out an innovative new global analysis of the distribution of forests and woodlands across drylands. This class of forest and woodland has previously been difficult to measure globally using satellite imagery or other remote sensing because of the relative low density of trees.
Read the Science and Technology Research News story - “‘Lost’ Forests May Help Balance Global Carbon Budget.”
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