Forest News

January 21, 2026

Top Headlines

Scientists Found the Soil Secret That Doubles Forest Regrowth

Jan. 15, 2026 New research shows tropical forests can recover twice as fast after deforestation when their soils contain enough nitrogen. Scientists followed forest regrowth across Central America for decades and found that nitrogen plays a decisive role in how ...

A 3,000-year High: Alaska’s Arctic Is Entering a Dangerous New Fire Era

Jan. 14, 2026 For thousands of years, wildfires on Alaska’s North Slope were rare. That changed sharply in the 20th century, when warming temperatures dried soils and fueled the spread of shrubs, setting the stage for intense fires. Peat cores and satellite ...

Wildfires Are Polluting the Air Far More Than Thought

Jan. 7, 2026 Scientists have discovered that wildfires release far more air-polluting gases than previously estimated. Many of these hidden emissions can transform into fine particles that are dangerous to breathe. The study shows wildfire pollution rivals ...

Scientists Find Hidden Rainfall Pattern That Could Reshape Farming

Dec. 12, 2025 New research shows that crops are far more vulnerable when too much rainfall originates from land rather than the ocean. Land-sourced moisture leads to weaker, less reliable rainfall, heightening drought risk. The U.S. Midwest and East Africa are ...

The Five Great Forests That Keep North America’s Birds Alive

Nov. 22, 2025 Migratory birds that fill North American forests with spring songs depend on Central America’s Five Great Forests far more than most people realize. New research shows these tropical strongholds shelter enormous shares of species like Wood ...

Earth Has Hit Its First Climate Tipping Point, Scientists Warn

Oct. 29, 2025 Global scientists warn that humanity is on the verge of crossing irreversible climate thresholds, with coral reefs already at their tipping point and polar ice sheets possibly beyond recovery. The Global Tipping Points Report 2025 reveals how rising ...

Melting Ice Is Hiding a Massive Climate Secret Beneath Antarctica

Oct. 27, 2025 The Southern Ocean absorbs nearly half of all ocean-stored human CO2, but its future role is uncertain. Despite models predicting a decline, researchers found that freshening surface waters are currently keeping deep CO2 trapped below. This ...

Earth’s Climate Just Crossed a Line We Can’t Ignore

Oct. 13, 2025 Humanity has reached the first Earth system tipping point, the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs, marking the beginning of irreversible planetary shifts. As global temperatures move beyond 1.5°C, the world risks cascading crises such as ...

Record Amazon Fires Release More Carbon Than an Entire Country

Oct. 8, 2025 The Amazon has suffered its most destructive fire season in more than two decades, releasing a staggering 791 million tons of carbon dioxide—on par with Germany’s annual emissions. Scientists found that for the first time, fire-driven ...

Soil Warming Experiments Challenge Assumptions About Climate Change

Sep. 17, 2025 Heating alone won’t drive soil microbes to release more carbon dioxide — they need added carbon and nutrients to thrive. This finding challenges assumptions about how climate warming influences soil ...

The Surprising Reason Timber Plantations Explode Into Megafires

Aug. 21, 2025 Industrial forests, packed with evenly spaced trees, face nearly 50% higher odds of megafires than public lands. A lidar-powered study of California’s Sierra Nevada reveals how dense plantations feed fire severity, but also shows that proactive ...

This Is Where Tree Planting Has the Biggest Climate Impact

Aug. 21, 2025 Planting more trees can help cool the planet and reduce fire risk—but where they are planted matters. According to UC Riverside researchers, tropical regions provide the most powerful climate benefits because trees there grow year-round, absorb ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:29pm EST

The Hidden Climate Battle Between Forests and the Ocean

Aug. 2, 2025 Between 2003 and 2021, Earth saw a net boost in photosynthesis, mainly thanks to land plants thriving in warming, wetter conditions—especially in temperate and high-latitude regions. Meanwhile, ...

Scientists Modeled Nuclear Winter—the Global Food Collapse Was Worse Than Expected

July 26, 2025 What would happen if a nuclear war triggered a climate-altering catastrophe? Researchers have modeled how such a scenario could devastate global corn ...

From Air to Stone: The Fig Trees Fighting Climate Change

July 6, 2025 Kenyan fig trees can literally turn parts of themselves to stone, using microbes to convert internal crystals into limestone-like deposits that lock away carbon, sweeten surrounding soils, and still ...

Climate Is Changing Fast—and Forests Are 200 Years Behind

July 4, 2025 Forests aren’t keeping up with today’s climate chaos. While temperatures soar within decades, tree populations take 100 to 200 years to shift in response. A sweeping new analysis of ancient ...

Rainforest Deaths Are Surging and Scientists Just Found the Shocking Cause

July 3, 2025 Tropical trees are dying faster than ever, and it's not just heat or drought to blame. Scientists have uncovered a surprising culprit: ordinary thunderstorms. These quick, fierce storms, powered by ...

Scientists Create Living Building Material That Captures CO₂ from the Air

June 21, 2025 Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed an astonishing new material: a printable gel that’s alive. Infused with ancient cyanobacteria, this "photosynthetic living material" not only grows but also ...

Gravity, Flipped: How Tiny, Porous Particles Sink Faster in Ocean Snowstorms

June 21, 2025 In a twist on conventional wisdom, researchers have discovered that in ocean-like fluids with changing density, tiny porous particles can sink faster ...

83% of Earth’s Climate-Critical Fungi Are Still Unknown

June 15, 2025 Underground fungi may be one of Earth s most powerful and overlooked allies in the fight against climate change, yet most of them remain unknown to science. Known only by DNA, these "dark taxa" make ...

Why Past Mass Extinctions Didn't Break ecosystems—But This One Might

June 9, 2025 For millions of years, large herbivores like mastodons and giant deer shaped the Earth's ecosystems, which astonishingly stayed stable despite extinctions and upheavals. A new study reveals that only ...

New Velvet Worm Species a First for the Arid Karoo

May 30, 2025 A new species of velvet worm, Peripatopsis barnardi, represents the first ever species from the arid Karoo, which indicates that the area was likely historically more forested than at present. In the ...

2021's Hurricane Ida Could Have Been Even Worse for NYC

May 29, 2025 Hurricane Ida wreaked an estimated $75 billion in total damages and was responsible for 112 fatalities -- including 32 in New Jersey and 16 in New York state. Yet the hurricane could have been even ...

Does Planting Trees Really Help Cool the Planet?

May 29, 2025 Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics. But even if every tree lost since the mid-19th century is replanted, the total ...

Agriculture in Forests Can Provide Climate and Economic Dividends

May 29, 2025 Forest-based agroforestry can restore forests, promote livelihoods, and combat climate change, but emerging agroforestry initiatives focusing only on tree planting is leading to missed opportunities ...

When the Forest Is No Longer a Home -- Forest Bats Seek Refuge in Settlements

May 28, 2025 Many bat species native to Germany, such as the Leisler's bat, are forest specialists. However, as it is becoming increasingly hard for them to find tree hollows in forest plantations, so they ...

Nordic Studies Show the Significance of Old-Growth Forests for Biodiversity

May 27, 2025 Researchers conducted a systematic review of 99 scientific publications that compared the flora or fauna of old-growth forests, managed forests and clearcut sites in boreal Europe. The reviewed ...

New Study Reveals How Competition Between Algae Is Transforming the Gulf of Maine

May 22, 2025 New research shows how rapidly proliferating turf algae are waging 'chemical warfare' to inhibit the recovery of kelp forests along Maine's warming ...

Songbirds' Great Risk Results in Great Genetic Reward

May 21, 2025 Songbirds who make the arduous flight from their nesting sites in northern boreal forests to warm, southern climates in the winter may be rewarded for their journey with greater genetic ...

Cover Crops May Not Be Solution for Both Crop Yield, Carbon Sequestration

May 19, 2025 People have assumed climate change solutions that sequester carbon from the air into soils will also benefit crop yields. But a new study finds that most regenerative farming practices to build soil ...

Study Reveals Healing the Ozone Hole Helps the Southern Ocean Take Up Carbon

May 16, 2025 New research suggests that the negative effects of the ozone hole on the carbon uptake of the Southern Ocean are reversible, but only if greenhouse gas emissions rapidly decrease. The study finds ...

Amazon Could Survive Long-Term Drought but at a High Cost

May 15, 2025 The Amazon rainforest may be able to survive long-term drought caused by climate change, but adjusting to a drier, warmer world would exact a heavy toll, a study ...

Dual Associations With Two Fungi Improve Tree Fitness

May 15, 2025 When trees and soil fungi form close associations with each other, both partners benefit. Many tree species have further enhanced this cooperation by forming a concurrent symbiosis with two different ...

Artificial Intelligence and Genetics Can Help Farmers Grow Corn With Less Fertilizer

May 14, 2025 Scientists are using artificial intelligence to determine which genes collectively govern nitrogen use efficiency in plants such as corn, with the goal of helping farmers improve their crop yields ...

Europe's Forest Plants Thrive Best in Light-Rich, Semi-Open Woodlands -- Kept Open by Large Herbivores

May 14, 2025 Before Homo sapiens arrived, Europe's forests were not dense and dark but shaped by open and light-rich woodland landscapes. Researchers have analyzed 917 native forest plant species in Central ...

Growth Before Photosynthesis: How Trees Regulate Their Water Balance

May 13, 2025 In order for trees to grow, they need to control their water balance meticulously. A study shows how trees react to drought -- and revises previous ...

First Fossil Evidence of Endangered Tropical Tree Discovered

May 9, 2025 In a groundbreaking discovery in Brunei, scientists have found two-million-year-old fossils of Dryobalanops rappa—an endangered tropical tree that still lives today. The find marks the first fossil ...

Just 30 Species of Tree Dominate World's Most Diverse Savanna

May 8, 2025 Scientists have found that a mere 30 species of trees in the Cerrado -- the world's largest and most floristically diverse savanna -- account for nearly half of all its trees. The ...

The Atmospheric Memory That Feeds Billions of People: Newly Discovered Mechanism for Monsoon Rainfall

May 7, 2025 Across the globe, monsoon rainfall switches on in spring and off in autumn. Until now, this seasonal pattern was primarily understood as an immediate response to changes in solar radiation. A new ...

Climate Change: Future of Today's Young People

May 7, 2025 Climate scientists reveal that millions of today's young people will live through unprecedented lifetime exposure to heatwaves, crop failures, river floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical ...

Replanted Rainforests May Benefit from Termite Transplants

May 6, 2025 Termites -- infamous for their ability to destroy wood -- are rarely welcomed into rainforests that have been painstakingly replanted. But a new paper suggests that termite transplants may be ...

Halo Patterns Around Coral Reefs May Signal Resilience

May 5, 2025 A new study links grazing halo patterns in coral reefs, as well as those in other patchy habitats, to the spatial patterns of the shelter habitat itself. The researchers found that grazing halos are ...