Without care, reforestation projects can damage ecosystems and be useless as carbon stores. Here’s how to go about it the right way.
Indigenous Marind in West Papua consider the forest and its plants and animals as kin. These culturally valued multispecies relations, however, are being disrupted by oil palm development projects.
Sophie Chao
Indigenous Marind in West Papua consider the forest and its plants and animals as kin. These culturally valued multispecies relations, however, are being disrupted by oil palm development projects.
A toucan eating a fruit in the tropical wetlands of the Pantanal, Brazil.
Uwe Bergwitz/Shutterstock
Reversing the damage from fires in Brazil’s rainforest is not as simple as allowing trees to grow back. Decades of research shows how fires degrade their long-term health and utility.
Active fire hotspots detected by S-NPP/VIIRS on September 7 2019.
NASA Worldview
We have developed an online tool to help authorities identify which areas they should focus on for reducing forest fires and haze in order to maximize overall health benefits.
Smoke from wildfires in Siberia drifts east toward Canada and the U.S. on July 30, 2019.
NASA
A researcher based in Fairbanks, Alaska, links 2019’s record-breaking wildfires in far northern regions of the world to climate change, and describes what it’s like as zones near her city burn.
Undeveloped regions such as the Amazon rainforest are critical resources for slowing climate change.
lubasi/Wikimedia
A new report calls land key to solving climate change. The good news is that there are strategies for reducing carbon emissions from land use that can also produce economic and social benefits.
Once hunted into corners of North America, black bears have expanded across the continent since the early 1900s. But bears that end up living near people aren’t seeking close encounters.
Entering the second term of his presidency, Jokowi administration needs to put forest and land fires as priority.
Donny Sophandi/www.shutterstock.com
The Indonesian government should improve transparency and public access to land-use data, make the ban on new plantations on primary forests permanent, and give communities access to forests.
In New England, where most land is privately owned, research shows that land conservation promotes economic growth.
Harvard Forest/Ryan Burton
Protecting land from being developed intuitively may seem like a drag on local economies, but research in New England finds that it has the opposite effect.
The species which surround a tree in a forest make up the character of its neighbourhood. Good neighbours can make forests resilient to climate change.
Could our best shot at stopping climate catastrophe be restoring forests on a massive scale?
Forest restoration is underway in Biliran, Leyte, Philippines led by the local community with support from international researchers and government agencies.
Robin Chazdon
Restoring tropical rainforests is good for the climate, wild species and humans. But where to start? A new study pinpoints locations that will maximize benefits and minimize negative impacts.
An abandoned village in the Huesca Pyrenees has undergone ‘passive rewilding’.
Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock