Permanently protecting large, mature forests is a faster and cheaper way to stabilize Earth’s climate than complex carbon capture and storage schemes, and more effective than planting new trees.
Large areas targeted for forest restoration in Africa are covered by savanna and grassland, which provide important ecosystem services that would be lost should they be converted to forests.
Restoring western forests – thinning out small trees and dead wood – is an important strategy for reducing the risk of massive wildfires. But these projects aren’t fast, easy or cheap.
Local adaptation allows plants and animals to thrive in a diversity of places. Sometimes adaptation sharpens patterns of where organisms live, but 85% of the time, it creates a more homogeneous world.
We analysed 210,000 tree ring records from 80 different species, and found the trade off between growth and lifespan may neutralise the forest carbon sink.
Conservation and development scheme REDD+ has manifested as a series of models, which increases its perceived success and enables it to continue despite not delivering on its wide-reaching promises.