New global map reveals only 5% of Earth's land has tall trees
In short: Researchers have developed a high-resolution global map of vegetation height using deep learning. By combining space-borne LiDAR data with optical satellite imagery, they found that only 5% of the Earth's landmass is covered by trees taller than 30 meters, and just 34% of those tall canopies are currently located within protected areas.
This computational model fuses sparse LiDAR data from the GEDI mission with dense Sentinel-2 satellite images to estimate canopy height at a 10-meter resolution. While this improves the retrieval of tall, carbon-rich canopies, the study is limited to a snapshot of the year 2020.
Why it matters: High-resolution mapping shows a significant gap between where tall, carbon-rich trees exist and where they are protected.
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Sources
- Source: Research: Lang et al. (2023). A high-resolution canopy height model of the Earth. Nature Ecology & Evolution. · cc-by
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