Featured
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Article
| Open Access
FSC-certified forest management benefits large mammals compared to non-FSC
Camera-trap images of 55 mammal species in 14 logging concessions in western equatorial Africa reveal greater animal encounter rates in FSC-certified than in non-certified forests, especially for large mammals and species of high conservation priority.
- Joeri A. Zwerts
- , E. H. M. Sterck
- & Marijke van Kuijk
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News |
Indian forest act faces challenge in Supreme Court
Ecologists, bureaucrats and conservationists say India’s amended Forest Conservation Act will reduce biodiversity and harm livelihoods.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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News |
Surge in extreme forest fires fuels global emissions
Climate change and human activities have led to more frequent and intense forest blazes over the past two decades.
- Xiaoying You
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Nature Podcast |
Sounds of recovery: AI helps monitor wildlife during forest restoration
System aids researchers measuring biodiversity levels in Ecuador, and how people can follow basic instructions while fast asleep.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Shamini Bundell
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News & Views |
Assessing the scale of rubber deforestation in southeast Asia
Understanding the extent of deforestation associated with agriculturally harvested crops has implications for conservation efforts. A method to assess satellite data offers an accurate way to estimate rubber deforestation.
- Carlos Souza Jr
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Article
| Open Access
High-resolution maps show that rubber causes substantial deforestation
Satellite data used to generate high-resolution maps across Southeast Asia show that rubber-related deforestation is at least twofold to threefold higher than suggested by estimates used for setting policy.
- Yunxia Wang
- , Peter M. Hollingsworth
- & Antje Ahrends
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Where I Work |
Protecting peccaries, preserving a people’s knowledge
While working to safeguard habitat for pig-like animals in Argentina, Micaela Camino relies on the region’s Indigenous communities.
- Patricia Maia Noronha
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News & Views |
A call to reduce the carbon costs of forest harvest
Economic modelling of the global carbon cost of harvesting wood from forests shows a much higher annual cost than that estimated by other models, highlighting a major opportunity for reducing emissions by limiting wood harvests.
- William R. Moomaw
- & Beverly E. Law
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News |
Rings of fire: centuries of tree growth show wildfires increasing in Vietnam
The data suggest human activities are more to blame for the increase than climate change.
- Jude Coleman
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Research Briefing |
Tree diversity enhances soil carbon and nitrogen sequestration in natural forests
Biodiversity experiments show that a high diversity of plants increases the accumulation of soil carbon and nitrogen, but whether such conclusions hold in natural ecosystems is debated. An analysis of Canada’s National Forest Inventory provides strong evidence that the build-up of soil carbon and nitrogen on a decadal timescale increased with improved tree diversity in natural forest ecosystems.
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Research Briefing |
Greenhouse-gas effects of land-use change in Indonesian peatlands
Land-use changes alter the exchange of greenhouse gases, but the magnitudes of these effects remain uncertain. Estimates of net greenhouse-gas emissions associated with different uses of tropical peatland in Indonesia — including intact forest and Acacia tree plantations — could inform science-based practices for managing peatlands as nature-based mitigators of climate change.
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Research Briefing |
Observed reductions in rainfall due to tropical deforestation
Tropical deforestation affects local and regional precipitation, but the effects are uncertain and have not been determined using observations. Satellite data sets were used to show reductions in precipitation over areas of tropical forest loss, with stronger reductions seen as the deforested area expands.
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Correspondence |
Smart forest management boosts both carbon storage and bioenergy
- Peter Högberg
- , Tomas Lundmark
- & Pekka E. Kauppi
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News & Views |
An energetic look at the life in logged forests
What are the ecological consequences of logging in a tropical forest? A detailed assessment of vegetation growth, bird and mammal numbers, and energy flows in logged and unlogged forests offers some surprising findings.
- Pieter A. Zuidema
- & Joeri A. Zwerts
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News & Views |
Herbivores drive scarcity of some nitrogen-fixing tropical trees
In mature tropical forests, trees that can capture nitrogen experience high levels of herbivory. This could explain the low abundance of such trees, and demonstrates that herbivores can limit nitrogen availability on land.
- Joy B. Winbourne
- & Lindsay A. McCulloch
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News Feature |
Saving the Amazon: how science is helping Indigenous people protect their homelands
Drug runners, gold miners and loggers are rapidly invading the remote Peruvian Amazon, home to isolated people and a wealth of biodiversity. Nature met the researchers and Indigenous communities fighting to stop the destruction.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Correspondence |
Forest protection: invest in professionals and their careers
- Douglas Sheil
- & J. Doland Nichols
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Correspondence |
Ancient oaks of Europe are archives — protect them
- Christian Sonne
- , Changlei Xia
- & Su Shiung Lam
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News |
Controversial forestry experiment will be largest-ever in United States
At the Elliott State Forest in Oregon, researchers will explore how best to balance timber production with conservation.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Matters Arising |
Concerns about reported harvests in European forests
- Marc Palahí
- , Rubén Valbuena
- & Gert-Jan Nabuurs
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News Round-Up |
Unsustainable charcoal, COVID spreads on plane and antibody cocktails
The latest science news, in brief.
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News |
The Arctic is burning like never before — and that’s bad news for climate change
Fires are releasing record levels of carbon dioxide, partly because they are burning ancient peatlands that have been a carbon sink.
- Alexandra Witze
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Article |
Abrupt increase in harvested forest area over Europe after 2015
Fine-scale satellite data are used to quantify forest harvest rates in 26 European countries, finding an increase in harvested forest area of 49% and an increase in biomass loss of 69% between 2011–2015 and 2016–2018.
- Guido Ceccherini
- , Gregory Duveiller
- & Alessandro Cescatti
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News |
The biodiversity leader who is fighting for nature amid a pandemic
Elizabeth Mrema has a mighty task ahead of her, leading countries as they negotiate new biodiversity targets.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News |
Climate change made Australia’s devastating fire season 30% more likely
But researchers say the result is conservative, and that weather conditions that make fires more likely will continue to worsen.
- Nicky Phillips
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News |
The scientists restoring a gold-mining disaster zone in the Peruvian Amazon
Months after the military expelled thousands of illegal miners from La Pampa, researchers gained access to a sandy wasteland.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
Thousands of ancient Aboriginal sites probably damaged in Australian fires
The sites are rich in cultural history, but the blazes might also reveal some unknown ones, say archaeologists.
- John Pickrell
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News Q&A |
‘Deathly silent’: Ecologist describes Australian wildfires’ devastating aftermath
Out-of-control blazes have killed a billion wild animals. Those remaining will struggle to survive in a scorched landscape, Michael Clarke tells Nature.
- Dyani Lewis
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News Round-Up |
Indonesian fires, exoplanet telescope and the world’s oldest story
The latest science news, in brief.
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Article |
RETRACTED ARTICLE: Global analysis of streamflow response to forest management
Analysis of forest-management studies finds that forest removal is more likely to increase streamflow in areas with greater water storage between the surface and bedrock, and that forest planting is more likely to decrease streamflow in drier climates.
- Jaivime Evaristo
- & Jeffrey J. McDonnell
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Letter |
Trade-offs in using European forests to meet climate objectives
Simulations of commonly proposed forest-management portfolios for Europe show that no single portfolio would meet all the requirements of the Paris Agreement, and climate benefits from forest management would be modest and local.
- Sebastiaan Luyssaert
- , Guillaume Marie
- & Matthew J. McGrath
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Article |
Mapping tree density at a global scale
Ground-sourced tree density data is assembled to provide a global map of tree density, which reveals that there are three trillion trees (tenfold more than previous estimates); tree numbers have declined by nearly half since the start of human civilization and over 15 billion trees are lost on an annual basis.
- T. W. Crowther
- , H. B. Glick
- & M. A. Bradford
Wildlife boost in African forests certified for sustainable logging