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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Vast tropical tree farms push into biodiversity hotspots

Much of the tree growth in the tropics in the first decade of the century consists of plantations — not natural forest.
An aerial shot of oil palms stretching to the horizon at a plantation in Simunjan, Sarawak, Malaysia.

An oil-palm plantation stretches to the horizon in Sarawak, a state in Malaysia that is a biodiversity hotspot. Credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images

Commercial tree plantations make up a much larger share of the increase in tree cover in the tropics between 2000 and 2012 than national data would indicate1.

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Nature 606, 627 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01651-w

References

  1. Fagan, M. E. et al. Nature Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00904-w (2022).

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