ArticleNature communications2023
More than one quarter of Africa's tree cover is found outside areas previously classified as forest.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Centering geospatial data uncertainty and the potential for injustice in pastoralist rangeland conservation prioritization.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Previous prescribed burns saved thousands of ancient sequoias during historically unprecedented wildfires.Nature communications · 2026Article
- BCAR-Net: A Bidirectional Cross-Attention Network with Auxiliary Reconstruction for Tree Counting in Complex Forest Scenes Using Airborne RGB and LiDAR Data.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A 0.6-meter resolution canopy height model for the contiguous United States.Scientific data · 2026Article
- A 0.6-meter resolution canopy height model for the contiguous United States.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Regional priorities in implementing forestation and wind energy as climate solutions in facing their trade-offs.Nature communications · 2026Article
- When crops fail, forests follow: Agricultural shocks and deforestation in Zambia.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Large driftwood accumulations along arctic coastlines and rivers.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Improved modelling of biogenic emissions in human-disturbed forest edges and urban areas.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Mapping previously undetected trees reveals overlooked changes in pan-tropical tree cover.Nature communications · 2025Article
- AI-Powered Plant Science: Transforming Forestry Monitoring, Disease Prediction, and Climate Adaptation.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Mapping Temperate Savanna in Northeastern China Through Integrating UAV and Satellite Imagery.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Potential tree cover under current and future climate scenarios.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Using biodiversity features to promote an Ecosystem-Based Conservation framework in terrestrial ecosystems.PloS one · 2025Article
- Artificial intelligence for geoscience: Progress, challenges, and perspectives.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2024Review
- Mapping every adult baobab (Adansonia digitata L.) across the Sahel and relationships to rural livelihoods.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Food-sourcing from on-farm trees mediates positive relationships between tree cover and dietary quality in Malawi.Nature food · 2024Article
- Article
- Regional uniqueness of tree species composition and response to forest loss and climate change.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
24 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The consistent monitoring of trees both inside and outside of forests is key to sustainable land management. Current monitoring systems either ignore trees outside forests or are too expensive to be applied consistently across countries on a repeated basis. Here we use the PlanetScope nanosatellite constellation, which delivers global very high-resolution daily imagery, to map both forest and non-forest tree cover for continental Africa using images from a single year. Our prototype map of 2019 (RMSE = 9.57%, bias = -6.9%). demonstrates that a precise assessment of all tree-based ecosystems is possible at continental scale, and reveals that 29% of tree cover is found outside areas previously classified as tree cover in state-of-the-art maps, such as in croplands and grassland. Such accurate mapping of tree cover down to the level of individual trees and consistent among countries has the potential to redefine land use impacts in non-forest landscapes, move beyond the need for forest definitions, and build the basis for natural climate solutions and tree-related studies.
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