The global initiative GFBI has steadily grown over the past five years, and its efforts to understand the world’s tree population are bearing fruit. The global tree species estimate follows development of the first global map of tree symbioses, published in the journal Nature, and discovery that forest biodiversity benefits the economy by more than five times the cost of conservation efforts, published in the journal Science.
“We combined individual datasets into one massive global dataset of tree-level data,” Liang said. “Each set comes from someone going out to a forest stand and measuring every single tree — collecting information about the tree species, sizes and other characteristics. Counting the number of tree species worldwide is like a puzzle with pieces spreading all over the world. We solved it together as a team, each sharing our own piece.”
Liang originated the idea for the initiative while he was a junior faculty member in Alaska working on forest growth models.
“I literally found a rich forest inventory dataset in someone’s drawer,” he said. “I realized people would want that information, but it had never been published. Scientists would share their data on a project or request basis, but there was no central repository for the valuable data people were collecting.”
“It sparked a personal mission, and I began collecting more datasets. Over the next few years it evolved, with the help of many others, into this global, grassroots effort.”
The global dataset is the largest known to date, Liang said. It currently includes more than 38 million trees, spanning 90 countries and 100 territories.