How many trees are there in the United States? (Including Alaska and Hawaii)

[angkor]

“A tree is described as self-standing unit. Multiple trunks sharing the same root system must count as one.”

colorado aspen

[mnehring]

Start here:

http://www.fia.fs.fed.us/slides/Trend-data/Web%20Historic%20Spreadsheets/1977_2002_Live_trees_dbh.xls

http://fia.fs.fed.us/slides/major-trends.ppt

http://forestry.about.com/od/foresthistory1/a/tree_plt_timeln.htm

[TexasCajun]

You'll probably get an A+ for your class project.

Oh! ...it's your son's project. :)

[RightWhale]

If you count trees larger than 3/4 inch, the limit I can cut with my garden snippers, there are 100 per acre in the quarter of Alaska that has trees. That is 8 billion trees in Alaska.

[willgolfforfood]

Ummmm...... lots and LOTS of trees in the mountains of New Mexico. You could be a million light right there, maybe more.

[SoldierMedic]

This seems like the kind of question with many variables. Was the teacher refering to trees used to harvest lumber, like the many fir trees of Washington? Or is the number intended to include the Orange trees of Flordia, the Apple Trees of Washington, and every other variety of food producing tree?

[RightWhale]

Alaska is virtually all trees

Tundra is half, taiga half the other half, and forest the remainder. BTW, the tundra is on fire, 350 square miles burnt and still burning.

[RightWhale]

we still have immense stands of trees in this country

More trees now than when the Pilgrims landed.

[Darksheare]

I swear I didn’t do it.

[RightWhale]

It was lightning.

[Jaysun]

The best way to do this is to use Google Earth and simply count the trees. That’s worth at least a ‘B’.

[Rocky]

When you get the total, add one more (you forgot to count Al Gore).

[muir_redwoods]

There are more acres of trees in New England today than there were when the pilgrims landed. It’s hard to believe but we are at a peak of a 350 year forestation cycle that was at its ebb in about 1640 or so.

[angkor]

Obviously I have nothing better to do and zero personal life whatsoever or I wouldn’t have spent the last 30 minutes looking for a “forest density” overlay for GEarth.

No luck.

USFS must have one, but I’m not going there.

Back to my multi-week project to sample and combine several versions of “Wicked Game” in FL Studio.

Hey, it’s a hobby.

[djf]

If you can get within 10-fold either way, I’d say that’s a pretty good guess.

My guess would be somewhere 10 - 100 billion.

I drive the I5 corridor a lot, and believe me, there’s a humungous amount of trees out there.

[Jaysun]

You should consider drinking alcohol. ;o)

[Daffynition]

How many trees are there in the United States? (Including Alaska and Hawaii)

[djf]

Trees, in thousands

Outside Alaska: 286,434,232

Can’t make sense of the Alaska data because it seems low...

source:

http://www.fia.fs.fed.us/slides/Trend-data/Web%20Historic%20Spreadsheets/1977_2002_Live_trees_dbh.xls

[Daffynition]

A good website: Society of American Foresters ..including "Ask a forester"

• Where are all the forests? In the United States, the majority of forestland is located in the Pacific Coast (including Alaska), and South regions; each has approximately 214 millions acres of forested area. The North region contains 171 million acres of forest, and the Rocky Mountain region has 151 million acres of forestland.

• How many kinds of trees are there? Currently, there are approximately 689 species of trees in the United States.

• Who takes care of the forests? Most of the forestland in the US (57%) is managed by private individuals and companies. The remaining 43% is public land managed by local, state, and national government agencies.

• How much forest do we have? The United States has 8% of all forest in the world, making it the fourth most forest-rich country with approximately 750 million acres of forestland.

• Recreation: Between private and public land, almost 86% of all forestland in the country is available for outdoor recreation, much of which is located in the west. Between the Pacific Coast and the Rocky Mountain regions there are 10.3 acres of forestland per person, and in the northeast and southeast regions of the country there are still 2.9 acres per person to enjoy.

  Here's a pretty good forest/tree distribution map from 1859 for comparisons.

  You have quite a job there ... GOOD LUCK! And let us know the answer!!! ;-D