Ever wondered how many tree species live on our planet? Now we have the answer..

New study says there are around 73,300 tree species in the world today.

The study, which was published in the journal PNAS, is the result of a three-year worldwide project that tallied about 73,000 tree species on the planet.

This paper highlights the complexity of terrestrial ecosystems while also emphasizing how forest biodiversity is particularly vulnerable to human-induced changes, ranging from land use to climate change, with rare species being the most vulnerable.

Obtaining this level of information, however, is no easy task. There are numerous aspects at play, some of which are related to financial resources, some to logistics, others to field research, and yet others to taxonomy concerns.

To address these obstacles, researchers began by compiling the most comprehensive databases of forest tree species.

Approximately 40 million trees representing 64,000 species were identified during this mapping project. It was carried out by 150 scientists from all around the world as part of the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative (GFBI).

Using artificial intelligence and the supercomputer at Purdue University’s Forest Advanced Computing and Artificial Intelligence (FACAI) Laboratory in Indiana, the researchers ran complicated statistical analysis based on this first conclusion.

After these investigations and computations were done, experts concluded that our planet had around 73,300 tree species, which is 14% more than what is currently known.

According to these findings, there are still 9,000 unknown species, with 40% of them perhaps could be in South America, notably in the Amazon and Andes biomes of “grasslands, savannas, and shrublands” and “tropical and subtropical forests.” Approximately 3,000 of these species are rare, indigenous to the continent, and live in tropical and subtropical regions.

“We combined individual datasets into one massive global dataset of tree-level data,” said Jingjing Lian, one of the co-authors. “Each set comes from someone going out to a forest stand and measuring every single tree — collecting information about the tree species, sizes and other characteristics. Counting the number of tree species worldwide is like a puzzle with pieces spreading all over the world. We solved it together as a team, each sharing our own piece.”

Image Credit: PURDUE UNIVERSITY IMAGE

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