According to a new study, there are more than 3 trillion living trees on earth, and the fascinating, Nature-produced animation above shows where—and how tall—they really are.
This research, led by Thomas Crowther of Yale, was recently published in Nature. For the study, people were actually sent out to count trees; previous estimates were based solely on satellite imagery. Researchers used the hand counts to show that there are far more trees than we thought.
That’s the good news. The bad news: We’re losing about 10 billion trees a year. And that before humans showed up on the scene, there were twice as many trees. Watch more in the video above.
