Forestry articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Restoring tree cover is a prominent climate solution but can cause global warming due to changes in albedo. This paper maps albedo and carbon changes from restoring tree cover to highlight where the greatest net climate benefits can be achieved.

    • Natalia Hasler
    • , Christopher A. Williams
    •  & Susan C. Cook-Patton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tree mortality due to climate change and other disturbances is on the rise. Here, the authors use high-resolution remote sensing data, ground observations and deep learning to quantify individual dead trees and potential drivers across California in the year 2020, encompassing 91.4 million dead trees.

    • Yan Cheng
    • , Stefan Oehmcke
    •  & Stéphanie Horion

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest restoration in LMICs can contribute to global C mitigation targets. Here, the authors assess the economic feasibility of forest restoration methods in Panama, i.e. natural regeneration, native species plantings, and enrichment planting, showing that not all methods are economically viable.

    • Katherine Sinacore
    • , Edwin H. García
    •  & Jefferson S. Hall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protected areas are important for climate change mitigation. Here, the authors use satellite data and statistical matching to show that terrestrial protected areas have higher C stocks than non-protected areas, roughly equivalent to one year of annual global fossil fuel emissions.

    • L. Duncanson
    • , M. Liang
    •  & A. Zvoleff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors find that climate teleconnections modulate ~53 % of the global burned area with both synchronous and lagged signals, and marked regional patterns, with the Tropical North Atlantic mode being the most relevant.

    • Adrián Cardil
    • , Marcos Rodrigues
    •  & Sergio de-Miguel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How land-tenure regimes affect deforestation remains ambiguous. This study shows how deforestation in Brazil is land-tenure dependent, and how strategies to effectively reduce deforestation can range from strengthening poorly defined rights to strengthening conservation-focused regimes.

    • Andrea Pacheco
    •  & Carsten Meyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This research quantifies the role of zero deforestation policies and potential leakages in Brazilian soybean production, the third major driver of deforestation globally. Here the authors provide the first estimates of net global avoided soy-driven deforestation from zero-deforestation import restrictions and find that such restrictions could help avoid ~40% of deforestation for soy cultivation in Brazil and ~2% of global deforestation.

    • Nelson Villoria
    • , Rachael Garrett
    •  & Kimberly Carlson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impact of land-use and cover-change (LUCC) on ecosystem carbon stock in China is poorly known due to large biases in existing databases. Here the authors develop a new LUCC database with corrected false signals and reveal that forest expansion is the dominant driver of China’s recent carbon sink.

    • Zhen Yu
    • , Philippe Ciais
    •  & Guoyi Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wood used in construction stores carbon and reduces the emissions from steel and cement production. Transformation to timber cities while protecting forest and biodiversity is possible without significant increase in competition for land.

    • Abhijeet Mishra
    • , Florian Humpenöder
    •  & Alexander Popp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How forests influence cloud cover in different regions is not well understood. Here, the authors use satellite data to show that forests enhance clouds over most temperate and boreal forests but inhibited clouds over forests of Amazon, Central Africa, and Southeast US relative to nonforest areas.

    • Ru Xu
    • , Yan Li
    •  & Bojie Fu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies from tropical regions indicate that fragmented forests are less productive. Here, the authors report higher growth and biomass in temperate forest edges in North America, and show that temperate forests are more fragmented than tropical forests globally.

    • Luca L. Morreale
    • , Jonathan R. Thompson
    •  & Lucy R. Hutyra

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Urban trees influence temperatures in cities. The authors here investigate in spatio-temporal variations in their cooling effect and find 8-12 K decreased temperatures for tree-rich urban areas in Central Europe during hot summers, and up to 4 K for Southern Europe, respectively.

    • Jonas Schwaab
    • , Ronny Meier
    •  & Edouard L. Davin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We combine data from global forest resource assessments with a forest model to quantify the role of major drivers of net carbon fluxes from global forest biomass at national resolution between 1990 and 2020. We find that growth-condition changes, more than reforestation, counteracted forest biomass carbon emissions mostly driven by deforestation.

    • Julia Le Noë
    • , Karl-Heinz Erb
    •  & Simone Gingrich

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forests can influence climate by affecting low cloud formation, but where and when this occurs is not well known. Here, the authors provide a global-scale assessment, based on satellite remote sensing observations, suggesting afforestation mostly increases low cloud cover which could potentially cool surface temperatures.

    • Gregory Duveiller
    • , Federico Filipponi
    •  & Alessandro Cescatti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether tropical forest fragments within plantation landscapes are resilient to drought. Here the authors analyse LiDAR and ground-based data from the 2015-16 El Niño event across a logging intensity gradient in Borneo. Although regenerating forests continued to grow, canopy height near oil palm plantations decreased, and a strong edge effect extended up to at least 300 m away.

    • Matheus Henrique Nunes
    • , Tommaso Jucker
    •  & David A. Coomes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest structure depends both on extrinsic factors such as climate and on intrinsic properties such as community composition and diversity. Here, the authors use a dataset of stand structural complexity based on LiDAR measurements to build a global map of structural complexity for primary forests, and find that precipitation variables best explain global patterns of forest structural complexity.

    • Martin Ehbrecht
    • , Dominik Seidel
    •  & Christian Ammer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The nature of forest disturbances are changing, yet consequences for forest dynamics remain uncertain. Using a new index, Stanke et al. show the populations of over half of the most abundant tree species in the western US have declined in the last two decades, with grim implications for how temperate forests globally will respond to sustained anthropogenic and natural stress.

    • Hunter Stanke
    • , Andrew O. Finley
    •  & David W. MacFarlane

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Droughts pose an increasingly important threat to forests. Here the authors analyse a high-resolution Landsat-based dataset of forest canopy mortality in Europe over 1987–2016 to show that drought is already a major driver of tree mortality.

    • Cornelius Senf
    • , Allan Buras
    •  & Rupert Seidl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forests are critical for stabilizing our climate, but costs of mitigation remain uncertain. Here the authors show the global forest sector could reduce emissions by 6.0 GtCO2 yr−1 in 2055, or roughly 10% of the mitigation needed to limit warming to 1.5 °C by mid-century, at a cost of 393 billion USD yr−1, or $281/tCO2.

    • K. G. Austin
    • , J. S. Baker
    •  & A. Bean

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Salvage logging has become a common practice to gain economic returns from naturally disturbed forests, but it could have considerable negative effects on biodiversity. Here the authors use a recently developed statistical method to estimate that ca. 75% of the naturally disturbed forest should be left unlogged to maintain 90% of the species unique to the area.

    • Simon Thorn
    • , Anne Chao
    •  & Alexandro B. Leverkus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest management may play an important role in climate change mitigation. Here, Tong et al. combine remote sensing and machine learning modelling to map forest cover dynamics in southern China during 2002–2017, showing effects on carbon sequestration that are extensive but of uncertain longevity and possible negative impact on soil water.

    • Xiaowei Tong
    • , Martin Brandt
    •  & Rasmus Fensholt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest soil is known to be a source of the greenhouse gas N2O, but the impact of what is planted in that soil has long been overlooked. Here Machacova and colleagues quantify seasonal N2O fluxes from common boreal tree species in Finland, finding that all trees are net sources of this gas.

    • Katerina Machacova
    • , Elisa Vainio
    •  & Mari Pihlatie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Managing forests for the supply of multiple ecosystem services (ES) is key given potential trade-offs among services. Here, the authors analyse how forest stand attributes generate trade-offs among ES and the relative contribution of forest attributes and environmental factors to predict services.

    • María R. Felipe-Lucia
    • , Santiago Soliveres
    •  & Eric Allan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change may impact forest disturbances, though local variability is high. Here, Sommerfeld et al. show that disturbance patterns across the temperate biome vary with agents and tree traits, yet large disturbances are consistently linked to warmer and drier than average conditions.

    • Andreas Sommerfeld
    • , Cornelius Senf
    •  & Rupert Seidl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Expansion of rubber plantations threatens tropical forest carbon stocks and biodiversity, but may be dis-incentivised using carbon finance. Here, Warren-Thomas et al. use forest and agricultural data for Cambodia to show that carbon prices of $30–$51 per tCO2 are needed to match forest protection costs.

    • Eleanor M. Warren-Thomas
    • , David P. Edwards
    •  & Paul M. Dolman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Depending on where and when it occurs, vegetation cover change can affect local climate by altering the surface energy balance. Based on satellite data, this study provides the first data-driven assessment of such effects for multiple vegetation transitions at global scale.

    • Gregory Duveiller
    • , Josh Hooker
    •  & Alessandro Cescatti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The climate impacts of deforestation due to changes in biogenic volatile organic compound emissions, which act as short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), are poorly understood. Here the authors show that including the impact SLCFs increases the projected warming associated with idealised deforestation scenarios.

    • C. E. Scott
    • , S. A. Monks
    •  & C. Wilson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Prioritising areas for conservation is hindered by disagreements over ecological targets. Here, Armsworth et al. combine a simulation approach and case study to test if considering economic return on investment aids in prioritisation, and find that its impact on reaching agreements varies greatly.

    • Paul R. Armsworth
    • , Heather B. Jackson
    •  & Nathan A. Sutton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Amazon rainforest is dominated by relatively few tree species, yet the degree to which this hyperdominance influences carbon cycling remains unknown. Here, the authors analyse 530 forest plots and show that ∼1% of species are responsible for 50% of the aboveground carbon storage and productivity.

    • Sophie Fauset
    • , Michelle O. Johnson
    •  & Oliver L. Phillips

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Invertebrates are key components in the ecological functioning of tropical forests. Here, Ewers et al. show that, compared to primary forest, logging halves the contribution of invertebrate species to several key ecosystem processes, including litter decomposition.

    • Robert M. Ewers
    • , Michael J. W. Boyle
    •  & Edgar C. Turner

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