An area of forest more than half the size of Australia has been discovered, dotted across several continents.
Researchers from the University of Adelaide are among the team led by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to have uncovered the 467 million hectares of previously unreported forests and woodlands.
The forests have been identified in drylands in the Sahara desert, around the Mediterranean, southern Africa, central India, coastal Australia, western South America, north-east Brazil, northern Colombia and Venezuela and northern parts of Canada and Russia.
They have previously been difficult to measure because the density of trees is low, making them hard to detect using satellite images and other technologies.
A new photo-interpretation tool developed at the FAO, called Collect Earth, has overcome this challenge by offering a simple way to check the number and density of trees in arid areas.
Researchers from 15 organisations have used the tool to analyse very high-resolution satellite images of more than 210,000 dryland monitoring sites, discovering the new forests and woodlands in the process.
The amount discovered is equivalent to 60 percent of the size of Australia and has increased the estimate of global forest coverage by 10 percent.
And so far no eco-nuts like Julia(Butterfly)Hill and her kind of eco-wackos sitting in the trees these trees so far are not dropping green nuts
A forest half the size of Australia has been “discovered ” ? WTF and we are supposed to believe the science is settled when they can’t even count half a continent of trees .
Maybe that half a continent of trees got put in the European Carbon Trading heist .
So what does this massive cluster F mean to all the so called scientifically robust
understanding of the earth’s lungs ? Now we know where all that model made up warming went .
How can anyone take the earth has a fever con game serious ?
Comey deserved to be fired and so does the Paris Pledge .