Our planet might be hosting around 9,000 tree species yet to be discovered. To conquer these hurdles, very first researchers gathered the most extensive databases of forest tree species. Counting the number of tree types worldwide is like a puzzle with pieces spreading all over the world.” To get a reputable price quote of biodiversity, we need to pay attention to the number of uncommon types that are presently known, those that were found one, 2 or three times throughout the sampling on the field,” describes Cazzolla Gatti. If many species have been observed only a few times, there will most likely be many rare species that have actually not yet been recorded.”
This dataset (blue points in the main map) was utilized for the parametric evaluation and combined with the TREECHANGE occurrence-based information (purple points in the main map) to supply the quotes in this study. Green areas represent the global tree cover. Credit: From Cazzolla Gatti et al. in PNAS, 2022
Our planet might be hosting around 9,000 tree species yet to be found. A 3rd of these are rare species with a population that is limited both in terms of locations and numbers. This is one of the results of the first-ever quote of tree types richness at the worldwide level.
The study was published in the PNAS journal and is the result of a three-year worldwide job that counted around 73,000 tree types presently existing on earth. This study emphasizes the richness of terrestrial ecosystems and, at the very same time, it underlines how forest biodiversity is exceptionally vulnerable to human-induced modifications– from land-use to the environment crisis– and rare species are the most at threat.
” Extensive understanding of tree richness and diversity is essential to preserving the stability and performance of ecosystems,” discusses Roberto Cazzolla Gatti who is the first author of this study and a teacher at the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences of the University of Bologna. “Until today, our data regarding broad areas of the world was extremely restricted and based on field-observation and lists of species covering various areas. These constraints were destructive to a global point of view on the concern.”
However, reaching this kind of understanding is no small feat. There are numerous elements at play, some associated to money availability, some to logistics, some to field-research, and some other to problems relating to the taxonomies. To overcome these obstacles, very first researchers gathered the most substantial databases of forest tree types. This mapping operation determined approximately 40 million trees coming from 64,000 types. It involved 150 researchers all over the world and was carried out within the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative (GFBI).
Based upon this preliminary outcome, researchers performed complicated analytical analyses by using expert system and the supercomputer of the Forest Advanced Computing and Artificial Intelligence (FACAI) Laboratory of Purdue University in Indiana (USA).
Once these estimations and analyses were completed, researchers estimated that our world has around 73,300 tree types, 14% more than those presently understood.
” We integrated individual datasets, coming from someone heading out to a forest stand and measuring each and every single tree, into one huge global dataset of tree-level information. Counting the variety of tree species around the world resembles a puzzle with pieces spreading all over the world. We, the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative (GFBI), fixed it together as a group, each sharing our own piece,” stated professor Jingjing Liang, organizer of the GFBI Purdue-Hub and co-author of the paper.
According to these outcomes, there are still 9,000 unknown types, 40% of them could be in South America, more particularly in the two biomes made up of “grasslands, savannas, and shrublands” and “tropical and subtropical forests” of the Amazon and the Andes. Approximately 3,000 of those types are uncommon, endemic on the continent, and populate tropical and sub-tropical locations.
” To get a reliable estimate of biodiversity, we need to take notice of the number of unusual species that are presently understood, those that were discovered one, two or three times during the sampling on the field,” discusses Cazzolla Gatti. “Indeed, the majority of the species are many and rather common, there are a few unusual ones and even less are those that we dont know. If many types have actually been observed just a couple of times, there will most likely be lots of rare species that have not yet been documented.”
Researchers applied this approach to the available databases, both on the global and continental scale, estimated the variety of unknown tree species and identified the locations of the world in which they are likely to be found.
” These results highlight the vulnerability of global forest biodiversity to anthropogenic changes, especially land usage and climate, due to the fact that the survival of uncommon taxa is disproportionately threatened by these pressures”, said Peter B. Reich, regent teacher at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the research study.
The research study was published in the journal PNAS under the title “The number of tree species on Earth.” Author of the paper is Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, professor at the Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences of the University of Bologna.
For more on this research study, see Huge New Study Estimates There Are 9,200 Tree Species on Earth Yet To Be Discovered.
Referral: “The variety of tree types on Earth” by Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, Peter B. Reich, Javier G. P. Gamarra, Tom Crowther, Cang Hui, Albert Morera, Jean-Francois Bastin, Sergio de-Miguel, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Jens-Christian Svenning, Josep M. Serra-Diaz, Cory Merow, Brian Enquist, Maria Kamenetsky, Junho Lee, Jun Zhu, Jinyun Fang, Douglass F. Jacobs, Bryan Pijanowski, Arindam Banerjee, Robert A. Giaquinto, Giorgio Alberti, Angelica Maria Almeyda Zambrano, Esteban Alvarez-Davila, Alejandro Araujo-Murakami, Valerio Avitabile, Gerardo A. Aymard, Radomir Balazy, Chris Baraloto, Jorcely G. Barroso, Meredith L. Bastian, Philippe Birnbaum, Robert Bitariho, Jan Bogaert, Frans Bongers, Olivier Bouriaud, Pedro H. S. Brancalion, Francis Q. Brearley, Eben North Broadbent, Filippo Bussotti, Wendeson Castro da Silva, Ricardo Gomes César, Goran Cešljar, Víctor Chama Moscoso, Han Y. H. Chen, Emil Cienciala, Connie J. Clark, David A. Coomes, Selvadurai Dayanandan, Mathieu Decuyper, Laura E. Dee, Jhon Del Aguila Pasquel, Géraldine Derroire, Marie Noel Kamdem Djuikouo, Tran Van Do, Jiri Dolezal, Ilija Ð. Ðordevic, Julien Engel, Tom M. Fayle, Ted R. Feldpausch, Jonas K. Fridman, David J. Harris, Andreas Hemp, Geerten Hengeveld, Bruno Herault, Martin Herold, Thomas Ibanez, Andrzej M. Jagodzinski, Bogdan Jaroszewicz, Kathryn J. Jeffery, Vivian Kvist Johannsen, Tommaso Jucker, Ahto Kangur, Victor N. Karminov, Kuswata Kartawinata, Deborah K. Kennard, Sebastian Kepfer-Rojas, Gunnar Keppel, Mohammed Latif Khan, Pramod Kumar Khare, Timothy J. Kileen, Hyun Seok Kim, Henn Korjus, Amit Kumar, Ashwani Kumar, Diana Laarmann, Nicolas Labrière, Mait Lang, Simon L. Lewis, Natalia Lukina, Brian S. Maitner, Yadvinder Malhi, Andrew R. Marshall, Olga V. Martynenko, Abel L. Monteagudo Mendoza, Petr V. Ontikov, Edgar Ortiz-Malavasi, Nadir C. Pallqui Camacho, Alain Paquette, Minjee Park, Narayanaswamy Parthasarathy, Pablo Luis Peri, Pascal Petronelli, Sebastian Pfautsch, Oliver L. Phillips, Nicolas Picard, Daniel Piotto, Lourens Poorter, John R. Poulsen, Hans Pretzsch, Hirma Ramírez-Angulo, Zorayda Restrepo Correa, Mirco Rodeghiero, Rocío Del Pilar Rojas Gonzáles, Samir G. Rolim, Francesco Rovero, Ervan Rutishauser, Purabi Saikia, Christian Salas-Eljatib, Dmitry Schepaschenko, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen, Vladimír Šeben, Marcos Silveira, Ferry Slik, Bonaventure Sonké, Alexandre F. Souza, Krzysztof Jan Sterenczak, Miroslav Svoboda, Hermann Taedoumg, Nadja Tchebakova, John Terborgh, Elena Tikhonova, Armando Torres-Lezama, Fons van der Plas, Rodolfo Vásquez, Helder Viana, Alexander C. Vibrans, Emilio Vilanova, Vincent A. Vos, Hua-Feng Wang, Bertil Westerlund, Lee J. T. White, Susan K. Wiser, Tomasz Zawila-Niedzwiecki, Lise Zemagho, Zhi-Xin Zhu, Irié C. Zo-Bi, and Jingjing Liang, 31 January 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.2115329119.