NOAA Satellite Data Used in Study Finding Significant Greening in Earth's Vegetative Areas

A new study based long-term vegetation data sets derived, in part, from NOAA polar-orbiting satellites has found significant greening on a quarter to one-half of the Earth's vegetated lands.

"Greening" refers to 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.

According to the study, trends from three data sets -- GIMMS3g, GLASS and GLOBMAP -- consistently show positive values over a large proportion of the global vegetated area since 1982. The regions with the largest greening trends, consistent across the three data sets, are in southeast North America, the northern Amazon, Europe, Central Africa and Southeast Asia. All three data sets also consistently show a decreasing vegetation (browning) over less than 4% of global vegetated land—these are observed in northwest North America and central South America. (Note: Of the three data sets, two -- GIMMS3G and GLOBMAP -- are derived from AVHRR data.)

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