The Tongass National Forest in Alaska, a focus of political battles over old-growth logging and road-building in forests for decades, has received new protection from the Biden administration.
As a tree scientist who works with urban trees, I can assure you some large, old trees are well worth leaving alone, even you find them annoying sometimes.
Sacred trees are a cornerstone of our national identity. They transcend simple economics and sit at the centre of the sacred — sentinels in ceremony, birthing and burials.
The Cheonggyecheon stream in the heart of Seoul, which used to be a major highway.
Shutterstock
Despite their good intentions, cities rarely have the full set of skills and capabilities to turn their plans into a reality. Our research looks at what needs to change.
Climate change is causing jacarandas to flower earlier. If this trend continues, they could be at risk of flowering when it’s too cold and become dormant.
It’s no coincidence that more books about trees are popping up. There is an air of desperation in new books by Peter Wohllben, Janine Burke and others.
Juniper trees, common in Arizona’s Prescott National Forest, have been dying with the drought.
Benjamin Roe/USDA Forest Service via AP
A better understanding of the science behind falling trees – followed by informed action – will help keep us safe and ensure trees continue to provide their many benefits.
With the evidence uncovered by paleontologists, an artist sketched El Bosque Petrificado Piedra Chamana as it might have looked long before humans.
Mariah Slovacek/NPS-GIP
Large-scale tree-planting projects are politically popular and media-friendly, but without effective planning and long-term management, they can do more harm than good.
Avenues of Honour were planted to remind us of the sacrifice and suffering of our servicemen and women. But as the years wore on, many declined or disappeared.
Longleaf pines support one another through mycorrhizae – mutually beneficial relationships between certain fungi and the trees’ roots.
Justin Meissen/Flickr
We may think of plants as passive life forms, but they can cooperate, share resources, send one another warnings, and distance themselves from their communities when survival depends on it.
Modern computing allows to spot isolated trees and shrubs in semi-arid areas, facilitating research on the evolution of vegetation cover.
Martin Brandt
Advanced techniques allowed our research team to build an open database of billions of individual trees and challenge some common perceptions about vegetation in arid and semi-arid zones.
Scientists are learning trees can emit methane, which could be a big problem for global warming. But a world-first discovery of methane-eating bacteria in paperbark can help moderate this.