An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries has just published a study titled “Greening of the Earth and its Drivers” in the journal Nature Climate Change showing significant greening of a quarter to one-half of the Earth's vegetated lands using data from the NASA-MODIS and NOAA-AVHRR satellite sensors of the past 33 years. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees. Green leaves produce sugars using energy in the sunlight to mix carbon dioxide (CO2) drawn in from the air with water and nutrients pumped in from the ground. These sugars are the source of food, fiber and fuel for life on Earth. More sugars are produced when there is more CO2 in the air, and this is called CO2 fertilization.
About 85% of the Earth's ice-free lands is covered by vegetation. The area of all green leaves on Earth is equal to, on average, 32% of the Earth's total surface area - oceans, lands and permanent icesheets combined. “The greening over the past 33 years reported in this study is equivalent to adding a green continent about two-times the size of mainland USA (18 million km2), and has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system,” says lead author Dr. Zaichun Zhu, a researcher from Peking University, China, who did the first-half of this study as a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, USA, together with Prof. Myneni.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-04-co2-fertilization-greening-earth.html#jCp
Interesting info. Thanks for posting it. I bookmarked the link to read later. I even created a new Science and Technology bookmark folder. That is the first site I put in it.