Oman Daily Observer

Satellites find ‘hidden forests’ helping fight against global warming

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MILAN: Vast tracts of land previously considered barren are actually covered by forests “hiding in plain sight”, scientists said on Friday, a discovery that could help the fight against climate change and desertific­ation.

An internatio­nal team of researcher­s led by the UN Food and Agricultur­e Organizati­on (FAO) used new technology to analyse highresolu­tion images from Google Earth and map forest coverage in drylands worldwide.

They found that trees like baobab and acacia shade 467 million more hectares of land than previously thought — an area roughly equal to half the size of the United States — increasing estimates of global forest cover by at least nine percent.

The discovery allows for more accurate assessment­s of how much greenhouse gases are absorbed from the atmosphere by the world’s vegetation, FAO experts said.

“Drylands absorb more carbon than we thought and they can actually help mitigate climate change,” Eva Muller, director of FAO’s forestry policy and resources division told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

The analysis, published in journal Science, would also help forestry experts better identify areas suitable for restoring trees and vegetation in a bid to slow down desertific­ation, added Jean-Francois Bastin, one of the study’s authors.

In Africa only, some 60 million people could be forced to leave their homes within five years and two thirds of arable land could be lost by 2025 as land progressiv­ely turns into desert, according to the United Nations.

Bastin said the new estimate of forest coverage was calculated using a data collection tool named Collect Earth, which enabled researcher­s to analyse Google Earth satellite images with a resolution of less than one meter.

Earlier studies used lower definition images with a resolution of 30 to 250 meters that made it difficult to distinguis­h trees from soil in semi-arid areas where vegetation is sparse, he said.

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