By UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design.  Excerpt: Drawing on research developed by Paul Mayencourt’s team at the  UC Berkeley Wood Lab , Mad River Mass Timber has emerged as California’s first producer of dowel-laminated mass timber, which has the potential to improve forest health, mitigate wildfire risk, and accelerate the production of affordable housing — while also contributing toward the long-term goal of decarbonizing the environment. ...With guidance from Assistant Professor  Paul Mayencourt  and the  UC Berkeley Wood Lab , Humboldt County’s  Mad River Mass Timber  is pioneering the commercial manufacture of dowel-laminated timber (DLT) in the state. The first vertically integrated producer of mass timber in California, MRMT transforms waste wood from our forests into construction-ready building panels. ...Weak or small-diameter trees that cannot otherwise be used for construction, such as red fir, hemlock, and Ponderosa pine, can be jo...

By Kara Manke , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: After more than a century of fire suppression in California’s forests, mounting evidence shows that frequent fire — through practices like prescribed fire or Indigenous cultural burning — can improve forest health, increase biodiversity and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. ...A  new long-term study  shows that, while prescribed burning may release carbon dioxide in the short term, the repeated use of controlled fire may boost a forest’s productivity, or carbon sequestration capacity, in the long term....  Full article at https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/17/prescribed-burning-helps-store-forest-carbon-in-big-fire-resistant-trees/ . 

By Paul Voosen , Science.  Excerpt: It’s a hallmark prediction of climate change: As the world warms, trees will migrate not just toward the poles, but also up the slopes of mountains, eating away at fragile alpine ecosystems. Although advancing tree lines have been tracked at individual mountains, a new large-scale study  has found something surprising : Over a span of 4 decades, the largest upward movement of these forests has come not near the poles, as one might expect, but instead in the tropics, where monitoring has been far more limited....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/forests-are-migrating-mountain-peaks .

By Rebecca Owen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Tropical forests are biodiversity hot spots; preserving them is a crucial part of global efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. When these verdant ecosystems are destroyed, they release  millions  of metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, emissions numbers second only to those driven by fossil fuel consumption. A host of international efforts have emerged to help curb tropical forest loss. The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries ( REDD+ ) program, established in 2005, is a United Nations–supported initiative for countries to sustainably manage and conserve forested land to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Countries receive financial incentives to preserve and maintain their forests—compensation intended to make forests more valuable intact than cut down. There are more than 350 REDD+ projects worldwide, and in many project locations,  habitats have been protected , and...

By Kaja Šeruga , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The towering trees of old forests store massive amounts of carbon in their trunks, branches, and leaves. When these ancient giants are replaced by a younger cohort after logging, wildfire, or other disturbances, much of this carbon stock is lost. ...The resulting study, published in  Nature Ecology and Evolution , measured the regional net aging of forests around the world across all age classes between 2010 and 2020, as well as the impact of these changes on aboveground carbon. ...On average, forests that are at least 200 years old store 77.8 tons of carbon per hectare, compared to 23.8 tons per hectare in the case of forests younger than 20 years old. The implications for carbon sequestration are more nuanced, however. Fast-growing young forests, for instance, can absorb carbon much more quickly than old ones, especially in the tropics, where the difference is 20-fold. But even this rate of sequestration is not enough to replace the old fo...

By Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez et al, Science.  Editor's Summary: Species are expected to shift their ranges as the climate changes, but shifts may not occur fast enough, especially for immobile species such as plants. Two papers in this issue assess the degree to which plant species are tracking climate change in the American tropics, where data availability has constrained inference. Ramírez-Barahona  et al . show that in Mesoamerican cloud forests, climate change and deforestation together have led to a mean upward shift in species ranges since 1979, mainly due to contracting lower range edges. In tropical forests across the Americas, Aguirre-Gutiérrez  et al . found that tree traits are not shifting fast enough to track climate change based on trait-climate relationships, with smaller shifts in montane forests. —Bianca Lopez.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5414 . 

By Jianbang Gan , Science.  Excerpt: Wildfire occurrence and scale worldwide have risen over recent decades, with the most destructive wildfires in North America taking place in the past decade ( 1 ,  2 ). ...On page 91 of this issue, Wang  et al . ( 3 ) report the key drivers of burn severity.... ...These studies led to the development of predictive models that are used to project wildfire effects under different scenarios over time in locations where no historical fires have been recorded. However, the drivers of wildfire effects are complex and involve multiple interlinked factors, such as climate, vegetation, topography, and human activity. ...Among all the factors, fuel aridity, which reflects the abundance and moisture content of flammable vegetative fuels, was determined to be the primary driver for most Canadian forest fires between 1981 and 2020. ...Wang  et al . found a large increase in burn severity in northern Canada compared with other regions in C...

By Manuela Andreoni , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The residents of Maracaçumé, an impoverished town on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, are mystified by the company that recently bought the biggest ranch in the region. How can it possibly make money by planting trees, which executives say they’ll never cut down, on pastureland where cattle have been grazing for decades? ...The new company ...is a forest restoration business called Re.green. Its aim, along with a handful of other companies, is to create a whole new industry that can make standing trees, which store planet-warming carbon, more lucrative than the  world’s biggest driver  of deforestation: cattle ranching. ...About a fifth of the great rainforest is already gone. And scientist warn that rising global temperatures could push the entire ecosystem, a trove of biodiversity and a crucial regulator of the world’s climate, to collapse in the coming decades unless deforestation is halted and  an area the siz...

https://www.science.org/content/article/satellite-signals-can-measure-forest-s-moisture-and-its-ability-survive By SEAN CUMMINGS , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The same radio signals that enable your smartphone to pinpoint your location may also reveal how much water a forest holds within its foliage. By measuring how much GPS satellite signals weakened as they passed through a forest canopy, researchers were able to estimate the canopy’s water content. Experts say the technique, which uses a simple setup of two GPS receivers, could provide a simple and affordable way to track a forest’s water content. ...it could provide useful data to researchers trying to figure out how forests will fare under climate change.... 

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/eastern-us-reforestation-climate-change By YaleEnvironment360.  Excerpt: Over the 20th century, the U.S. as a whole warmed by 1.2 degrees F (0.7 degrees C), but across much the East, temperatures dropped by 0.5 degrees F (0.3 degrees C). A new study posits that the restoration of lost forest countered warming, keeping the region cool. “This widespread history of reforestation, a huge shift in land cover, hasn’t been widely studied for how it could’ve contributed to the anomalous lack of warming in the eastern U.S., which climate scientists call a ‘warming hole,’”  said lead author Mallory Barnes , of Indiana University. “That’s why we initially set out to do this work.”.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/climate/amazon-rain-forest-tipping-point.html By Manuela Andreoni , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could transform into grasslands or weakened ecosystems in the coming decades, a new study found, as climate change, deforestation and  severe droughts  like the one the region is currently experiencing damage huge areas beyond their ability to recover. Those stresses in the most vulnerable parts of the rainforest could eventually drive the entire forest ecosystem, home to a tenth of the planet’s land species, into acute water stress and past a tipping point that would trigger a forest-wide collapse, researchers said. While earlier studies have assessed the individual effects of climate change and deforestation on the rainforest, this peer-reviewed study,  published on Wednesday in the journal Nature , is the first major research to focus on the cumulative effects of a range of threats..... 

https://eos.org/articles/poorer-countries-face-heavier-consequences-of-climate-change By atherine Kornei , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Forest biomes are on the move because of climate change, and nations from Albania to Zimbabwe will experience shifts in economic production and ecosystem-provided benefits as vegetation cover relocates—or disappears entirely. ...An ongoing  poleward shift in vegetation , likely to persist into the future, has implications for natural resources such as timber, said  Bernie Bastien-Olvera , a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. “As forests migrate towards higher latitudes, many countries are losing forest cover.” ...“Tropical forests will replace temperate forests, temperate forests will replace boreal forests, and boreal forests will grow where there is right now only permafrost.” ...Bastien-Olvera and his collaborators furthermore showed that poorer countries were harder hit:...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/climate/jbs-ipo-nyse.html By Manuela Andreoni  and  Dionne Searcey , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A giant Brazilian meatpacking company is facing persistent opposition to its plans for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange because of concerns about corruption settlements, accusations of Amazon deforestation and its growing market share in the United States. The proposed listing by JBS, the world’s biggest meatpacker, has brought together American beef producers, environmentalists and politicians from both major parties in a rare common cause. ...a dozen British lawmakers  urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to reject the share listing  to “send a clear message that the United States stands firm in its commitment to combating climate change.” ... Research suggests  about 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon is connected to the beef industry. Global meat consumption  is expected to grow 14 percent by 2...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/world/canada/canada-boreal-forest-logging.html By Ian Austen  and  Vjosa Isai , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Canada has long promoted itself globally as a model for protecting one of the country’s most vital natural resources: the world’s largest swath of boreal forest, which is crucial to fighting climate change. But a new  study  using nearly half a century of data from the provinces of Ontario and Quebec — two of the country’s main commercial logging regions — reveals that harvesting trees has inflicted severe damage on the boreal forest that will be difficult to reverse. Researchers led by a group from Griffith University in Australia found that since 1976 logging in the two provinces has caused the removal of 35.4 million acres of boreal forest, an area roughly the size of New York State. While nearly 56 million acres of well-established trees at least a century old remain in the region, logging has shattered this forest,...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/climate/forests-trees-climate-change.html By Manuela Andreoni  and  Leanne Abraham , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Over the last century, governments around the world have drawn boundaries to shield thousands of the world’s most valuable ecosystems from destruction.... These protected areas have offered lifelines to species threatened with extinction, supported the ways of life for many traditional communities and safeguarded the water supplies of cities. ...Now, high in orbit, a new way of seeing forests is making it clear that...protected areas can still be a crucial buffer against climate change. ...a  study ...which was published this year, showed that policies designed to protect nature can also be important for mitigating global warming, Dr. Duncanson said. She called the findings “a beautiful side benefit” of global forest conservation….

https://eos.org/articles/diverse-forests-store-more-carbon-than-monocultures By Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: It pays to mix it up—planted forests containing more than one tree species can store several times as much carbon as monocultures, as shown in a  meta-analysis  published in  Frontiers in Forests and Global Change . Researchers have long known that biodiversity increases forest productivity, ....Forestry companies often plant monocultures, so the study has the potential to affect industry practices. ...Researchers sifted through more than 11,300 studies, including some from a worldwide network of tree diversity experiments called  TreeDivNet , to find 18 that included the information necessary to compare carbon storage in monocultures with that in stands containing two or more species of trees. ...Stands with two or more species contained at least 25% more aboveground carbon than the best-performing monocultures, .... When the researchers focused ...

https://www.science.org/content/article/forests-could-suck-226-gigatons-carbon-if-restored-and-protected-study-argues By RIK STOKSTAD , Science.  Excerpt: The restoration and protection of forests worldwide could help remove about 226 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, according to a study published today in  Nature . That’s equivalent to roughly 20 years of emissions from burning fossil fuels and other sources at current rates. Some experts say the analysis provides a more reliable estimate of the carbon-capturing potential of forests than a previous, controversial study that analyzed only the potential benefit from restoring trees to degraded land. But critics are skeptical that the new number is even remotely achievable. ...Humans have cut down a significant fraction—perhaps as much as half—of the forests that once existed. And every year, deforestation contributes 15% of all the greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. So, scientists have been interested in finding ...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/03/carbon-tree-planting-schemes-threaten-tropical-biodiversity-aoe By Patrick Greenfield , The Guardian. Excerpt: Monoculture tree-planting schemes are threatening tropical biodiversity while only offering modest climate benefit, ecologists have said, warning that ecosystems like the Amazon and Congo basin are being reduced to their carbon value. Amid a boom in the planting of single-species plantations to capture carbon, scientists have urged governments to prioritise the conservation and restoration of native forests over commercial monocultures, and cautioned that planting swathes of non-native trees in tropical regions threatens important flora and fauna for a negligible climate impact. Writing in  the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution , ecologists said the increasing popularity of commercial pine, eucalyptus and teak plantations in the tropics for carbon offsetting is having unintended consequences, such as drying out na...

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adj6951 By JULIA P. G. JONES  AND  SIMON L. LEWIS , Science.  Excerpt: Changes in land use, mostly deforestation in the tropics, emit 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually—second only to fossil fuel use, which emits 35 billion tons ( 1 ). Reducing emissions to net zero is necessary to stabilize global temperatures ( 2 ). One controversial approach to tackle fossil-fuel emissions from private companies, individuals, and governments has been to “offset” them by investing in projects to either stop emissions that would have otherwise occurred, such as by reducing deforestation, or by investing in carbon uptake projects, such as forest restoration. ...West  et al.  ( 3 ) show that offsetting through paying projects to reduce emissions by conserving tropical forests is not reducing deforestation as claimed and is worsening climate change.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/20/us/trees-heat-wave-new-haven-ct.html By Colbi Edmonds , The New York Times.  Excerpt: As the United States sweats through another unbearable  summer of record-breaking heat , planting more trees has emerged as a practical solution to cooling cities,  especially areas known as “heat islands”  where concrete and congestion magnify already brutal temperatures. Yet filling a neighborhood with trees is not as simple as it seems. Funding and maintenance are issues for cities grappling with  crime  and  housing . And not everyone, it turns out, wants a tree. ...Mr. Rodriguez, who volunteers with the Urban Resources Initiative, a nonprofit partnered with Yale University, spends much of his time persuading his neighbors that trees are worth the trouble. Because the trees are planted by a volunteer organization, residents have to take some responsibility for making sure the trees survive and thrive. The city of New Haven pays f...