To help combat the climate crisis, the United States needs to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and planting billions of trees is one of the most effective ways to do that. But where are the best places to plant? These should be areas that are not only cost-effective for planting, but also that offer important co-benefits such as flood mitigation and wildlife habitat.

Developed in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, the Reforestation Hub helps answer this question. This online tool offers the most comprehensive reforestation data ever assembled for the United States. Users can find reforestation opportunities in their county or state and run this data through filters, including current land use and land ownership. This tool shows how many trees are needed to reforest a given piece of land and how much carbon a revived forest could store.

All told, the Reforestation Hub identifies up to 133 million acres of formerly forested lands in the United States that could be reforested. Reforesting this entire area could absorb an additional 333 million metric tons of carbon per year — equivalent to removing 72 million cars from the road.