article_snippet: But despite this, the planet has got greener in the past decade, with the total amount of plant coverage increasing overall.
article_snippet: The researchers say that Earth is getting greener thanks to a combination of environmental and financial factors.
article_snippet: Dr Liu, who specialises in observing the water cycle, including rainfall and soil moisture, used a new technique of collecting satellite data on radio frequency radiation naturally emitted by the Earth to calculate the amount of vegetation in a given area.
article_snippet: Before, scientists measured vegetation through satellite images and other techniques, looking at canopy greenness and plant height.
article_snippet: Louis Verchot, a research director at the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research, said He findings were 'by and large what we would expect in the warmer and wetter world that results from climate change'.
article_snippet: Dr Verchot said the value of Dr Liu's study is that it puts a number on the contribution of vegetation to moderating greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere. '
article_snippet: Scientists are particularly alarmed by land clearances in Kalimantan and Sumatra because the forests are richer and more diverse habitats than grassland, for example, and absorb more carbon per hectare than savannah and croplands.
article_snippet: While total plant cover may have increased over the past decade, total plant cover is arguably of lower quality than that found in rainforests, which also support networks of rare inter-dependent species.
highlights_snippet: Scientists in Australia analysed 20 years of satellite data on greenery .
  