forests

Humanity’s efforts to conserve biodiversity are falling short and will continue to do so without focusing on retaining 79% of the remaining vegetation on the planet, according to a new study. Meeting this goal is important to achieving climate and conservation goals set by the United Nations. The study, published in Conservation Biology, notes that […]

Rising sea levels, accelerated coastal erosion, severe flooding and drought, rapid melting of Arctic sea ice and more frequent and intense wildfires are all symptoms of climate change that are changing our planet’s landscape. In some places, these changes are happening too fast for plants and animals to keep up. A recent study by researchers […]

Ponderosa pine forests in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range have been an important source of storage for atmospheric carbon. But a drought and pest invasion from 2012 to 2015 wiped out these trees. Now, researchers have found that it is unlikely for the forests to recover to their densities before the megadrought. From 2012 to […]

Yet another report has cast doubt on the accuracy and reliability of the carbon credits companies and individuals purchase to offset their climate-polluting emissions. 

Mountain forests are important habitats for many species, but a new study has found that habitat loss in these areas has been rapidly accelerating since 2000. In that time, more than 78.1 million hectares (approximately 193 million acres) of mountain forests have been lost, equaling an area greater than the size of Texas. A team […]

A new study published in Nature Wednesday found that recovering forests in the Amazon, Central Africa and Borneo had offset the greenhouse gas emissions from slightly more than a quarter of deforestation in those regions over more than three decades.

Even as miners, loggers and ranchers fell them at record rates, scientists are still learning about all the things that forests do to keep the local and global climate comfortable and stable.  Most recently, they have provided “compelling evidence” for the first time for a link between deforestation and rainfall decline across the tropics as […]

In a sobering first for the U.S., an environmental activist was shot and killed by police in Atlanta, Georgia, in an ongoing struggle over the future of a portion of that city’s urban forest.