How many trees are there in the Amazon?

An October 2013 essay on fieldmuseum.org

"A couple of weeks ago some colleagues and I wrote a paper in Science reporting some new findings on Amazonian forests. Some of the findings are actually just numbers, and one of those numbers is really big. It's the number of trees we think probably grow in the Amazon, and it's 390 billion.

One advantage of writing for scientists is that you can let numbers like that drop without much in the way of apology. Three point nine times ten to the eleventh: it is, as they say, what it is. When you write for a broader audience, though, you can't type '390 billion' without pausing for a minute and casting about for something neighborly to say...."

Read the article here.

Photo by Federico Pardo