Researchers have concluded that the planet can support a lot more plant life than experts once thought, even in its current state, according to a recent study.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, details how the "theoretical limit of terrestrial plant productivity" - that is, not exclusively crop yeild, but tree and flower growth as well - has been severely underestimated in the past.
"When you try to estimate something over the whole planet, you have to make some simplifying assumptions, and most previous research assumes that the maximum productivity you could get out of a landscape is what the natural ecosystem would have produced," professor Evan DeLucia, who led the new analysis, explained in a recent statement. "But it turns out that in nature very few plants have evolved to maximize their growth rates."
DeLucia and his colleagues wanted to recalculate the Earth's limits with those max growth rates in mind.
The team used a model of light-use efficiency and the theoretical maximum efficiency at which plants convert sunlight into biomass to estimate the theoretical limit of net primary production (NPP) on a global scale.
Even after accounting for expected decreased productivity in the wake of climate change conditions (drought, flooding, heat, etc), they still found that the Earth's maximum plant production was "roughly two orders of magnitude higher than the productivity of most current managed or natural ecosystems."
DeLucia is quick to point out that his only goal is to determine what is possible, not whether or not this would be a good thing. While increased biomass would be fantastic for cutting carbon emissions across the globe, to reach this heightened limit every living plant that grows in soil would have to be brought to its maximum natural potential with the help of scientific modification. Processes like genetic editing, as opposed to genetic modification via foreign trait insertion, are considered more "natural." However, it would still require scientists to tinker with plants on a genetic level in a lab.
"I don't want to be the guy that says science is going to save the planet and we shouldn't worry about the environmental consequences of agriculture, we shouldn't worry about runaway population growth," DeLucia said. "All I'm saying is that we're underestimating the productive capacity of plants in managed ecosystems."