How many trees are on our planet?

This is the question I sought to answer a few years ago, while I was working at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The inspiration came from a friend working with an ambitious goal in mind: Fighting global warming by planting a billion trees. But why a billion? And was this really the number of trees needed to achieve his goal? The result astonished me. Find out more about how many trees there are on our planet and why the it is important in this brief interview that I did with science correspondent, Nell Greenfieldboyce from NPR – National Public Radio.

I will also speak during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. Join us for our session on predicting climate change at a large scale or watch the livestream.

Thomas Crowther's research aims to generate a mechanistic understanding of the ecological processes that drive the carbon cycle and climate system at a global scale. An ecologically-informed understanding of Earth system dynamics is necessary to understand and address global climate change.
You can contact Tom via email: tom.crowther@usys.ethz.ch