Published in

National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 6(119), 2022

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2115329119

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

The number of tree species on Earth

Journal article published in 2022 by Roberto Cazzolla Gatti ORCID, Peter B. Reich ORCID, Javier G. P. Gamarra ORCID, Tom Crowther, Cang Hui ORCID, Albert Morera ORCID, Jean-Francois Bastin, Sergio de-Miguel ORCID, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Jens-Christian Svenning ORCID, Josep M. Serra-Diaz ORCID, Cory Merow, Brian Enquist, Maria Kamenetsky ORCID, Junho Lee and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Upload
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Policy details
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Significance Tree diversity is fundamental for forest ecosystem stability and services. However, because of limited available data, estimates of tree diversity at large geographic domains still rely heavily on published lists of species descriptions that are geographically uneven in coverage. These limitations have precluded efforts to generate a global perspective. Here, based on a ground-sourced global database, we estimate the number of tree species at biome, continental, and global scales. We estimated a global tree richness (≈73,300) that is ≈14% higher than numbers known today, with most undiscovered species being rare, continentally endemic, and tropical or subtropical. These results highlight the vulnerability of global tree species diversity to anthropogenic changes.