| Literature DB >> 28495750 |
Jean-François Bastin1,2, Nora Berrahmouni3, Alan Grainger4, Danae Maniatis5,6, Danilo Mollicone3, Rebecca Moore7, Chiara Patriarca3, Nicolas Picard3, Ben Sparrow8, Elena Maria Abraham9, Kamel Aloui10, Ayhan Atesoglu11, Fabio Attore12, Çağlar Bassüllü13, Adia Bey3, Monica Garzuglia3, Luis G García-Montero14, Nikée Groot4, Greg Guerin7, Lars Laestadius15, Andrew J Lowe16, Bako Mamane17, Giulio Marchi3, Paul Patterson18, Marcelo Rezende3, Stefano Ricci3, Ignacio Salcedo19, Alfonso Sanchez-Paus Diaz3, Fred Stolle20, Venera Surappaeva21, Rene Castro1.
Abstract
Dryland biomes cover two-fifths of Earth's land surface, but their forest area is poorly known. Here, we report an estimate of global forest extent in dryland biomes, based on analyzing more than 210,000 0.5-hectare sample plots through a photo-interpretation approach using large databases of satellite imagery at (i) very high spatial resolution and (ii) very high temporal resolution, which are available through the Google Earth platform. We show that in 2015, 1327 million hectares of drylands had more than 10% tree-cover, and 1079 million hectares comprised forest. Our estimate is 40 to 47% higher than previous estimates, corresponding to 467 million hectares of forest that have never been reported before. This increases current estimates of global forest cover by at least 9%.Mesh：
Year: 2017 PMID： 28495750 DOI： 10.1126/science.aam6527
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Science ISSN： 0036-8075 Impact factor: 47.728