An international team of scientists including Environment Institute Members have discovered previously unreported forest, published in Science today.

Associate Professor Ben Sparrow, Postdoc Research Fellow Dr Greg Guerin and Professor Andrew Lowe were involved in the discovery of drylands forest which covers 467 million hectares.

To put this in perspective, this new forest discover is roughly the size of 60% of Australia! Their work adds 10% to the global estimates of forest cover.

The work was run and coordinated by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) which included 15 organisations from around the world. The FAO conducted an innovative new global analysis of the distribution of forests and woodlands across drylands using high resolution satellite images.

Their work could alter significantly improve current global carbon modelling, provide opportunity to alter the pace of climate change if large scale conservation efforts are taken in these regions and improve the lives of those who live in the drylands.