Australia ranks 6th in the world in the amount of forest area, with about 134 Mha (FAO 2020), after Russia, Brazil, Canada…, the countries where you might think forests really are, not in the dry Australian continent.
Keep reading if interested
2/n
Although Australia does have extensive, diverse and beautiful forests, the very large area claimed is because of the decision by the Government to report forest extent based on forests equal or taller than 2 m, while the rest of the countries report on taller than 5 m.
There are reasons for the choice of 2 m over 5 m, including perhaps that the FAO forest definition is a Northern Hemisphere view of what a forest should look like.
6/6
In the end, definitions need to serve their purpose in the first place (structure, function, biodiversity, resources).
And regardless of the forest definition, even single trees outside of forests play an important role.
And speaking of beautiful forests in Australia, the photo in the first tweet in this thread, here repeated, is from the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland.
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I am disappointed that Science has allowed an abstract of a, otherwise good, paper to say that planting trees is "our most effective climate change solution to date". This is factually wrong and certainly a distraction. 1/2 bit.ly/2LBUbID
Planting trees is certainly an important part of the climate change mitigation portfolio, but are neither cheaper nor easier to implement than other options. Most importantly, it won't fix the climate problem, albeit it should be part of the solution. 2/2
it is also important to recognise that trees come with litter and soils, so a tree-only focus will always report a partial carbon balance of the true effect on climate, eg, more trees in a future warmer Russia and Canada can also have higher emissions from C-rich soils.