How many trees are there in the United States? (Including Alaska and Hawaii)

[cyclotic]

You can use my favorite line fro the teacher.

“Trees are nothing but a slow growing crop.”

Guaranteed to get a rise out of any tree hugger.

[Muleteam1]

Exactly. It’s like a hardware store with bins of hardware from which quantities of hardware are sold daily. The store knows how many pieces of hardware it sells, it just never knows exactly how many pieces it has left. It would be a system of bookkeeping totally unacceptable to the IRS if the USFS were held to the same standards to which American businesses are held.

[Lawgvr1955]

Just run Google Earth and count. Might be pushing to get it done by Monday morning though.

[FraxinusZ]

I work for the US Forest Service in a little known research sector known as Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA). I notice that some of the responses given have included links to FIA sites. This is your best bet. We are “the nations forest census.” You are never going to come up with any exact number for trees in the US - but this should give you an idea. We have research plots every 6 thousand acres all over the US including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. So yeah - for my living I count trees! BTW MAine has the highest percentage of forest land with NH coming in 2nd. I work in NH and Vermont and have worked in southern New England, West Virginia, NC, OHIO and MISS.

[FraxinusZ]

fia.fs.fed.us

[jjotto]

So what answer did you come up with and has the teacher responded?

[MeekOneGOP]

So how many are there in Oregon alone?

I ax because the GOP Primary election is today and my opening comment on my FB page article was:

Oregon: Where there are more trees than people! LOL!

[SamAdams76]

Thanks for bumping this thread! If I remember correctly, my son turned in a number well north of the 1.2 billion I originally discussed. However there turned out to be no right answer as one cannot possibly know the number of trees in the United States to any degree of precision. The teacher was more interested in the methodology that the students used to come up with their best answer.

My son just graduated college this past weekend so I'm thinking this little exercise nearly a decade ago helped to make him smarter.

[M Kehoe]

2,873,564,381.

I counted them.

5.56mm

[MeekOneGOP]

LOL!

[MeekOneGOP]

That is great ... :)

So the teacher didn’t pitch a hissy fit? lol!

[M Kehoe]

8^)

5.56mm

[Dank09]

In Oregon there is ~ 30 million acres of forest land, each with ~ 100-200 trees, we also have tons of trees in cities and towns and outside designated forest land, so just in Oregon there is many times the total amount of trees you assumed were in the entire US. Nevada has lots of joshua trees and Hawaii has tons of trees too.