How many trees are there in the world?
A 2015 study in Nature put the global total at 3.04 trillion trees, with a stated uncertainty of about ±0.1 trillion. The previous best guess had been 400 billion, so the new figure was almost eight times higher — not because there are more trees than anyone thought, but because the old number came from satellite-estimated forest area rather than from ground counts of stems. Roughly 45% of the total is in the tropics and about 24% in the boreal forest. Around 15 billion trees are cut down each year and about 5 billion regrow.
How the figure is arrived at
Combine 429,775 ground plots where somebody physically counted the stems with satellite imagery that maps forest cover. The plots give trees per hectare for a given forest type and climate; the satellites give how many hectares of that type exist. A tree was defined as a woody stem at least 10 cm in diameter at breast height, which is why the number would change enormously under a different definition.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 2,900,000,000,000
- High estimate
- 3,200,000,000,000
- Spread
- 1.1× between the bounds
Other living things and the natural world counts
- How many people are there in the world? about 8.2 billion
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches
- How many ants are there in the world? about 20 quadrillion
- How many insects are there? about 10 quintillion
- How many species are there? about 8.7 million
- How many people have ever lived? about 117 billion
- How many drops of water are there in the ocean? about 27 septillion
- How many fish are there in the sea? somewhere between 3 trillion and 100 trillion — nobody knows
- How many species are endangered? more than 45,000 assessed as threatened
- How many bees are there in the world? roughly 2 trillion managed honey bees
- How many birds are there in the world? about 50 billion wild birds
- How many bacteria are there on Earth? about 5 nonillion
- How many earthquakes are there each year? about 20,000 located a year — around 55 a day
- How many chickens are there in the world? about 26 billion alive at any moment
Common questions
- How many trees are there in the world?
- about 3 trillion
- How is that estimated?
- Combine 429,775 ground plots where somebody physically counted the stems with satellite imagery that maps forest cover. The plots give trees per hectare for a given forest type and climate; the satellites give how many hectares of that type exist. A tree was defined as a woody stem at least 10 cm in diameter at breast height, which is why the number would change enormously under a different definition.
Related pages
- How many people are there in the world? about 8.2 billion
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches
- How many ants are there in the world? about 20 quadrillion
- How many insects are there? about 10 quintillion
- How many species are there? about 8.7 million
- How many people have ever lived? about 117 billion
- How many drops of water are there in the ocean? about 27 septillion
- How many fish are there in the sea? somewhere between 3 trillion and 100 trillion — nobody knows
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many countries are there in the world? Things people built
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many stars are there in the Milky Way? Space and the universe
- How many atoms are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many galaxies are there? Space and the universe
Sources
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place