Abstract

The potential for global forest cover The restoration of forested land at a global scale could help capture atmospheric carbon and mitigate climate change. Bastin et al. used direct measurements of forest cover to generate a model of forest restoration potential across the globe (see the Perspective by Chazdon and Brancalion). Their spatially explicit maps show how much additional tree cover could exist outside of existing forests and agricultural and urban land. Ecosystems could support an additional 0.9 billion hectares of continuous forest. This would represent a greater than 25% increase in forested area, including more than 200 gigatonnes of additional carbon at maturity.Such a change has the potential to store an equivalent of 25% of the current atmospheric carbon pool. Science , this issue p. 76 ; see also p. 24

Keywords

Climate changeCanopyAgroforestryWoodlandGlobal warmingTree canopyTree (set theory)Environmental scienceTropicsClimate change mitigationGeographyEnvironmental resource managementEcologyBiologyMathematics

MeSH Terms

Climate ChangeEnvironmental Restoration and RemediationTrees

Affiliated Institutions

Related Publications

Publication Info

Year
2019
Type
article
Volume
365
Issue
6448
Pages
76-79
Citations
2000
Access
Closed

Social Impact

Altmetric

Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions

Citation Metrics

2000
OpenAlex
77
Influential
1628
CrossRef

Cite This

Jean‐François Bastin, Yelena Finegold, Claude García et al. (2019). The global tree restoration potential. Science , 365 (6448) , 76-79. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax0848

Identifiers

DOI
10.1126/science.aax0848
PMID
31273120

Data Quality

Data completeness: 90%