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Forests

New Research

North America’s Trees Create Some of the World’s Hottest Forest Fires

What makes certain forest fires especially destructive?

Cool Finds

A 10,000-Year-Old Forest Has Been Discovered, And It’s Under Water

Ancient oak trees found on the bottom of the North Sea represent a prehistoric woodland that likely spanned thousands of acres

The western tarsier, a rare primate species, has lost large amounts of its Borneo habitat to logging. More of that habitat is likely to disappear because of climate change.

Borneo’s Mammals Face a Deadly Mix of Logging and Climate Change

But adding small amounts of land to already protected areas could help save the island’s biodiversity

The lavish displays of the Gold Souk in Dubai are a long way from deforested areas of South America, but a new study connects the two worlds.

Lust for Gold Is Consuming Precious South American Forests

Satellite images show that while the scale of deforestation is small, it is bleeding into protected areas

Everglades National Park is in critical condition due to poor water management, according to the IUCN.

A Third of Natural World Heritage Sites Are in Danger

From the Florida Everglades to Africa’s first national park, many crucial protected areas are in serious trouble

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Age of Humans

See How Humans Have Reshaped the Globe With This Interactive Atlas

Zoomable maps reveal the scope of humanity’s influence on Earth—and the innovations aiming to create a more sustainable future

Cool Finds

What Should the Price of Visiting Wilderness Be?

If passed, HR 5204 could introduce widespread fees for entering formerly free public lands

Deforestation in Liberia

Trending Today

Norway Is Paying Liberia To Stop Deforestation

Norway is promising Liberia $150 million to stop cutting down trees by 2020

Seen in 2012, an excavator works on a road near an Indonesian oil palm plantation built on disputed lands once home to a rainforest.

The Best and Worst Places to Build More Roads

Road works today are “basically chaos”—but a new global road map could be key to protecting agriculture and nature

New Research

The Forest Service Is Running Out of Money to Fight Fires

Firefighting and prevention costs now blaze through 51 percent of the U.S. Forest Service budget, compared to 17 percent in 1995

This hardware innovation will make it easier for conservationists to identify where illegal deforestation efforts are happening and stop them before the trees have been taken down.

Tech Watch

How Solar-Powered Recycled Smartphones Could Save the Rainforest

A Silicon Valley non-profit is ready to give the forests of Africa and the Amazon ears to listen for loggers—and the ability to phone the authorities

Tropical regions are home to many unique species, such as this tiny frog belonging to the genus Dendrophryniscus that lives in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. A new study finds that removing just a few trees can quickly cause biodiversity in these tropical forests to fall.

New Research

Removing Just a Few Trees Can Lower Tropical Animal Biodiversity

Selective logging can halve the number of species of mammals and amphibians in a forest

New Research

Borneo Has Lost 30 Percent of Its Forest in the Past 40 Years

Borneo’s tropical forests have fallen at twice the rate as the rest of the world’s felled rainforests

Leaves of the plant Plantago lanceolata infected with powdery mildew.

What the Spread Of A Plant Mildew Tells Us About Forests

Fragmenting habitats into smaller pieces may let diseases spread more easily, a new study finds

Forest in British Columbia that has borne both fire and beetle infestations

Cool Finds

Beetles Have Destroyed 38,000 Square Miles of Forest

As part of this year’s farm bill, the United States Forest Service will try to rehabilitate beetle-infested forests

Crawling bare ivy on wall.

How to Bring a Devastated Forest Back to Life

Humans have damaged the world’s forests, but not irreparably

New Research

Restoring Cut Rainforests Might Not Work Well If There’s Light Pollution Nearby

Fruit-eating bats can’t do their job distributing seeds around the new jungle patch if they’re blinded by lights

The Remnants of Prehistoric Plant Pollen Reveal that Humans Shaped Forests 11,000 Years Ago

The discoveries could boost indigenous populations’ claims to ancestral lands long thought to be untouched by human activity

Congo's second civil war ended in 2003, but ongoing conflict has left millions displaced. Two million were forced from their homes in 2012, for instance, due to violence in the eastern part of the country.

New Research

Congo’s Civil Wars Took A Toll On Its Forests

Conflicts drove the human population deep into protected areas, satellite maps reveal

Narcotics operators are responsible for this stretch of deforestation, locating in a protected areas in Honduras.

New Research

As Drug Traffickers Move In, Tropical Forests Fall

Deforestation in Central America goes hand-in-hand with narcotics operations, which replace forests with airstrips, roads and money-laundering farms

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