News: Trees are good for the environment

Scientists have used GIS to conduct a detailed analysis to show that planting lots of trees around the world could help turn the corner on climate change. While that sounds obvious, the real surprise is the scale of the potential impact:

“This new quantitative evaluation shows [forest] restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” said Prof Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who led the research. “What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.”

The research team behind this project has an interactive map online that allows users to explore the tree potential of locations around the worlds.