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The BBC reports that the Earth has approximately 3×1012 trees. This is significantly larger than the previous estimate of 4×1011 trees.
The BBC also reports that some trees have particular resistance to wildfires:
More than 20,000 hectares of forest were charred. But in the middle of the devastation, a group of cypresses was still standing tall and green.
When a fire swept through an experimental plot in Andilla, in the Spanish province of Valencia in 2012, it gave researchers the perfect opportunity. The plot, which was part of CypFire, a project financed by the European Union, was established during the 1980s to test the resistance of more than 50 varieties of Mediterranean cypress to a pathogenic fungus. After the fire event of 2012, it also provided further anecdotal evidence of the peculiar resilience of the species in the face of fire. Botanist Bernabé Moya and his brother, environmental engineer José Moya, both from the department of monumental trees in Valencia, had been involved in the project for several years.
"On our way to what we knew would be a Dante-esque scene during that tragic summer, we felt deep sadness at the thought of losing a plot of such value to the conservation of biodiversity," Bernabé Moya told BBC Mundo.
"But we had hope that perhaps some of the cypresses had survived."
"When we got there we saw that all the common oaks, holm oaks, pines and junipers had completely burnt. But only 1.27% of the Mediterranean cypresses had ignited."
Further research reveals that cypress trees are wetter than other trees but this characteristic was missed due to lab research using dry samples. Cypress trees may or may not be suitable as natural, bio-diverse, fire breaks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @09:56AM
It's not just that, it is that particularly on the cosmological scale, scientists assume that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic. This means that physicists assume that you can point a telescope at a tiny patch of the universe, count the number of galaxies there, and then extrapolate to the entire universe. This assumption is backed up by some data (e.g. look at many tiny patches at different angles).
On the earth, such an assumption is patently not true, for example due to differential heating of the earth's surface by the sun, different geologies, land/sea boundaries and so forth. So it is much harder to make an estimate like what you want. Note that in terms of money invested, huge amounts of money has been invested in mapping the earth (it has obvious military and civilian uses). For example, the satellite data used in the article requires use of satellite imagery, which is the end point of maybe 50 years of R&D into satellite imagery and a satellite constellation worth however many 100 million $. The problem is that they needed 400,000 forest plots (quote from article) which is a huge number and a huge investment of effort...