It’s important to close roads from further vehicle use after the end of logging operations. But these roads ought to be re-opened when the next phase of logging takes place in each area of forest.
Intense: driven by drier conditions and earlier spring melts, wildfires are getting more potent.
kylewith/flickr
A review of more than 40 years of wildfire activity in the western U.S. demonstrates the potent effect drier, warming spring seasons, due to climate change, is having on wildfires.
Conditions in Alberta were ideal for wildfires: little snow cover, dry and warm.
Mark Blinch/Reuters
Paul Roundy, University at Albany, State University of New York
Yes, climate change is creating conditions for the extraordinary wildfires near Fort McMurray, Alberta, but El Niño played a bigger role, says atmospheric scientist.
Lonesome National Park is home to some of the last remaining brigalow woodland.
Science was instrumental in working out how to clear brigalow forest to make way for farming in the 20th century. Now it’s trying to bring these iconic forests back.
Achieving green cities will require more than just canopy cover targets and central city strategies. It will need new approaches to urban planning and development.
When Europeans first arrived in Australia’s Southwest, they found vast tracts of huge jarrah trees. Now, after logging and dwindling rainfall, only a handful of these giants remain.
New data have revealed a disturbing trend in forest loss: the hearts of the world’s forests are disappearing. To stop them bleeding out, we’ll have to say ‘no’ to some developments.
Young secondary forest in Costa Rica, with old-growth trees visible in the background.
Susan G. Letcher
Susan Letcher, Purchase College State University of New York
Forests that grow back after being cleared for agriculture or by logging grow back much faster than old-growth forests, soaking up carbon and providing vital habitat.
Pencil pines are found nowhere else in the world, and are extremely sensitive to fire.
brewbooks/Flickr
William Powell, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Adding a single wheat gene helps the American chestnut withstand a fungal pathogen that nearly wiped these hardwood trees out of the eastern forests they once dominated.
An industrial pulp-wood plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia.
William Laurance
From drought to economic slowdown, 2016 promises a mixed bag for the world’s forests.
The national flower of Zimbabwe, the Glory Lily, is also found in Queensland where it’s more famously known as a noxious weed that’s highly poisonous to humans.
JohnSkewes/Flickr
Australia may have reputation for vast areas of wilderness, but in reality the continent’s ecosystems have been chopped and diced. Now we need to protect what’s left.
Forest conservation has been a contentious issue in international climate change discussions for years, but now developing countries are embracing the need to protect their forests.
Indigenous children depict fish in the sea at a pre-Paris rally in Sao Paulo.
Nacho Doce / Reuters