Harvesting avocados in Uruapan, in the Mexican state of Michoacan.
Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
Avocados are marketed as a superfood, but growing them for an expanding world market has turned a rural Mexican state into an unsustainable monoculture.
Mohamud Omer/AAP
Deforestation can make landslides more likely. But by itself, replanting trees isn’t enough to remove the risk.
An archaeologist takes bog samples in Germany for analysis of past civilizations and what they cultivated.
Stefan Puchner/picture alliance via Getty Images
Understanding how humans came to exert such enormous pressure on Earth’s ecosystems can inform more sustainable ways of living.
Forest areas are in sharp decline in many parts of Ghana.
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Ghana is losing forests because of cocoa farming, firewood harvesting, mining and logging.
The collaboration between communities and scientists aims to restore baobab forests in Madagascar to this natural state.
Stéphane Corduant, Mada-Movies. Courtesy ARO Baobab Project
In Madagascar, communities and scientists are growing tens of thousands of baobab seedlings to restore the 1,000-year-old forests.
People walk through floodwater in one of Kenya’s informal settlements after heavy rains in Nairobi.
Joy Nabukewa/Xinhua via Getty Images
There’s been an increase in the amount of runoff generated from rainfall as land is altered by settlement and deforestation.
Rhett Butler
What harm can a road do? Plenty. Once built, illegal roads let loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers into the jungle, and the felling begins.
The Cross River National Park, Oban biosphere, is one of the few forest reserves remaining in Nigeria.
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Nigeria’s forest resources have dwindled and are in danger of disappearing in a few decades if nothing is done to save them.
Swedish old-growth forest.
Ulrika Ervander
Research suggests these forests could disappear by the 2070s.
Rainforest jungle in Borneo, Malaysia, is destroyed to make way for oil palm plantations.
Rich Carey/Shutterstock
A recently published report sheds light on how 350 big companies and 150 financial institutions are falling behind with goals to halt and reverse deforestation.
Cattle walk along an illegally deforested area in an extractive reserve near Jaci-Parana, Rondonia state, Brazil. Deforestation is a global problem and while it has varied causes the trade in illegal timber is a major factor.
(AP Photo/Andre Penner)
Effective use of genomic identification could revolutionize the control of the illegal timber trade.
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Green anacondas are the world’s heaviest snakes, and among the longest. it’s remarkable this hidden species has slipped under the radar until now.
El muriqui del sur, endémico de Brasil, está en peligro de extinción.
Rob Jansen / Shutterstock
Trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest depend heavily on primates for their survival, but agriculture and deforestation are threatening them both.
NASA via AP
The most comprehensive Australian carbon budget assessment completed to date shows the nation flip-flops from source to sink of carbon emissions, depending on the prevailing conditions.
Planting trees on deforested lands in Panama.
Jorge Aleman/Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
It might seem counterintuitive to suggest timber harvesting when the goal is to restore forests, but that gives landholders the economic incentive to protect and manage forests over time.
Yaroslav Astakhov/Shutterstock
When forest communities have secure rights and tenure, the results can be miraculous.
ChinaTopix/AP/AAP
December 5, 2023
Pep Canadell , CSIRO ; Corinne Le Quéré , University of East Anglia ; Glen Peters , Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo ; Judith Hauck , Universität Bremen ; Julia Pongratz , Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich ; Philippe Ciais , Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) ; Pierre Friedlingstein , University of Exeter ; Robbie Andrew , Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo , and Rob Jackson , Stanford University
Record emissions are fast shrinking the remaining amount of carbon dioxide we can emit if we are to limit global warming. At current rates, we’ll use up the budget for a 1.5°C outcome in seven years.
Managing methane from belching cattle is a top innovation priority.
Lance Cheung/USDA
Food systems are increasingly disrupted by climate disasters, while also being a major contributor to climate change. World leaders at COP28 vowed to do something about it.
Large machines work in the soya monoculture on a farm in Sidrolândia, Mato Grosso do Sul: the current trajectory of deforestation is diminishing the capacity of the Amazon and Cerrado to regulate rainfall patterns, putting the country’s agricultural systems at great risk.
AP Photo/Eraldo Peres
Diminishing forests reduces the capacity of the Amazon and Cerrado to regulate rainfall patterns. That’s bad for communities, but also bad for business and global food security.
Hevea brasiliensis is grown in the world’s most biodiverse areas.
dangdumrong/Shutterstock
Rubber plantations are replacing forests, particularly in tropical regions.