Sep 03, 2015 07:24 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

In a new study, a team of researchers aimed to estimate the number of trees existing in the world and set the figure at three trillion.

According to BBC News, previous studies put the Earth's number at trees at 400 billion, a number eight times smaller the one in the new study, published in the journal Nature. Updating the world's number of trees may aid climate change research, as well as wildlife conservation efforts.

"Trees are among the most prominent and critical organisms on Earth, yet we are only recently beginning to comprehend their global extent and distribution," study lead author Thomas Crowther, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, said in a press release. "They store huge amounts of carbon, are essential for the cycling of nutrients, for water and air quality, and for countless human services.

"Yet you ask people to estimate, within an order of magnitude, how many trees there are and they don't know where to begin. I don't know what I would have guessed, but I was certainly surprised to find that we were talking about trillions."

Crowther described the study as an objective presentation of data and said it should not be been in a positive or negative light.

"So, it's not good news for the world or bad news that we've produced this new number," he told BBC News. "We're simply describing the state of the global forest system in numbers that people can understand and that scientists can use, and that environmental practitioners or policymakers can understand and use."

While tree loss in smaller areas like cities and towns is well documented, the new study helped the researchers see how humans' activity and sheer presence affected the trees as well. Unsurprisingly, more people in a given area often meant less trees.

"We've nearly halved the number of trees on the planet, and we've seen the impacts on climate and human health as a result," Crowther said in the release. "This study highlights how much more effort is needed if we are to restore healthy forests worldwide."

See Now: Covert Team Inside Newsweek Revealed as Key Players in False Human Trafficking Lawsuit