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Although river protection is core to social and environmental well-being, the extent to which river conservation policies are effective is difficult to assess. This study reveals that, under all relevant protection mechanisms in the contiguous USA, only 12% of rivers are adequately protected.

The extreme hot and dry conditions of 2023 reduced soil respiration and enhanced net forest carbon sequestration in Canada, offsetting wildfire emissions, according to satellite-based and in situ observations of CO₂ fluxes.

Large swathes of standing dead trees or ‘ghost forests’ can form owing to rising sea levels in coastal areas, but the extent to which this occurs is unclear. This study maps ghost forests at the individual tree level along the US Atlantic coastal region.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Natural forest regeneration is key to biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. Here the authors present a high-resolution time-series map of the age of regenerating tropical moist forests and find that most are ≤5 years old, with forest characteristics and geography explaining patterns better than climate or human pressure.

The structure and functioning of soil food webs between biomes remains unknown. Here, tropical soil food webs are shown to have higher energy flux, predation and herbivory than temperate soil food webs which are based on litter and microbial biomass.

This study quantifies Brazil’s soil carbon debt (1.40 Pg C) and demonstrates that improved agricultural practices enhance carbon recovery. The findings reveal Brazil’s significant capacity to mitigate emissions and influence global carbon markets.

Birds are iconic and valued users of urban parks. An assessment of 935 parks across 186 US cities shows that a range of park features across multiple parks are needed to broadly support avian diversity and that the regional and seasonal effects of tree canopy cover are especially important.

Isoprene emissions are commonly estimated using satellite measurements and model simulations. Here, using eddy covariance, the authors report higher emission rates over the Amazon forest than those estimated with these techniques and a relationship between terrain elevation and isoprene emissions.

Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

Applying a combined social science and trait-based ecology approach, the authors identify ecological traits in forests eliciting positive or negative well-being among human participants in England and Wales and find that forests with higher species’ effect trait richness, and those associated with higher participant well-being, are in areas with the least socio-economic deprivation.

This study examines long-term changes in species richness across tropical forests in the Andes and Amazon. Hotter, drier and more seasonal forests in the eastern and southern Amazon are losing species, while Northern Andean forests are accumulating species, acting as a refuge for climate-displaced species.

Alternative stable states in forests have implications for the biosphere. Here, the authors combine forest biodiversity observations and simulations revealing that leaf types across temperate regions of the NH follow a bimodal distribution suggesting signatures of alternative forest states.

How landscapes are arranged affects soil pathogenic fungi worldwide. The authors reveal the global pattern and pronounced scale-dependency of landscape complexity and land-cover quantity on soil pathogenic fungal diversity.

An analysis of the impact of logging intensity on biodiversity in tropical forests in Sabah, Malaysia, identifies a threshold of tree biomass removal below which logged forests still have conservation value.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

By combining satellite observations with ground-based data and expert validation, this analysis demonstrates considerable misestimation of grassland extent and thereby carbon stock estimates in previous global assessments based on remote sensing.

Thirty years of forest demographic data, combined with recent ecophysiological measurements, reveal that intense Amazon droughts sharply increase tree mortality once soil moisture falls below a threshold, and that these hot droughts will become more frequent and intense as Earth warms towards hypertropical conditions.

This study investigates the effects of forestation on temperature in Europe using climate model experiments. The findings indicate that conversion from coniferous to broadleaved trees in currently forested areas can provide cooling for summer hot extremes.

While experiments in younger trees support increased production under higher CO₂, it is unclear whether more mature trees can respond similarly. Here, the authors show increased production of biomass in a 180-year-old Quercus robur L. woodland under 7 years of free-air CO₂ enrichment (FACE).

This study shows that trees are likely to change clouds in the future and reveals that climate models struggle to accurately represent the relevant processes of aerosol-cloud-climate interactions over forests.

Achieving the Paris Agreement’s climate goals depends on safeguarding and monitoring the permanence of forest carbon stocks, as delays in addressing their vulnerability to disturbances drastically increase mitigation costs and efforts.

Achieving mitigation from forests aligned with #NDCs requires $20–72 billion annually by 2030. Global coordination could double mitigation with the same level of finance, revealing major efficiency gains and informing next generation climate targets.

Examining drivers of the latitudinal biodiversity gradient in a global database of local tree species richness, the authors show that co-limitation by multiple environmental and anthropogenic factors causes steeper increases in richness with latitude in tropical versus temperate and boreal zones.

Wildfires have caused widespread and increasingly severe losses within timber-producing forests in recent decades, according to maps of logging activity and wildfires.

European forest tree species experienced strong climatic fluctuations over Quaternary. In spite of these pronounced environmental changes, population genomic analyses reveal that major forest tree species managed to retain their evolutionary potential over the period.

A study in eastern Canada finds that forest-management strategies that lead to simplified forest structure and composition have resulted in loss of breeding habitat and associated population losses for many bird species.

Monitoring ecosystem conditions in quantitative and standardized ways could facilitate transnational coordination of conservation and land management policies. Here, the authors use a spatially explicit ecosystem accounting approach to assess the state of European forests and recent trends.

Bark decomposition could significantly affect global carbon and nutrient cycling. Here, the authors report the global trend of bark decomposition rates, identify the key drivers in different climate regions, and predict the response of bark decomposition to future climate change.

This study detects Chlamydia pneumoniae in human retina and brain, increasing with AD severity. Retinal pathogen load with Aβ₄₂ may predict AD stage. In models, infection drives Aβ deposition and NLRP3 activation, worsening pathology and cognition.

The resilience of tropical forest ecosystems to seasonal drought is linked to terrestrial potassium and phosphorus availability, according to a nutrient addition experiment in a moist forest in Uganda.

Fragmentation of forest ecosystems produces forest edges, which affect the distribution of many analysed vertebrate species; smaller-bodied amphibians, larger reptiles and medium-sized mammals experience a larger reduction in suitable habitat than other forest-core species.

The defaunation of vertebrates may disrupt forest functioning through the loss of plant-animal interactions, but impacts on forests remain unquantified. Here the authors show that seed dispersal is a key interaction and defaunation of primates and birds negatively impacts forest regeneration.

A global survey on the magnitude and persistence of moist forest cover change and canopy height following degradation using satellite remote sensing data finds that the effects are substantial and persist for decades.

Timber plantations in temperate countries are twice as likely to be destroyed by wildfires compared to natural wood-producing forests under similar conditions. The increasing threat of wildfires in the future will threaten global wood security.

A global analysis of deforestation rates in more than 18,000 terrestrial protected areas shows that, once protected area effectiveness is taken into account, only 6.5%—rather than 15.7%—of the world’s forests are protected, well below the Aichi Target of 17%.

Genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies 58 independent risk loci for major anxiety disorders among individuals of European ancestry and implicates GABAergic signaling as a potential mechanism underlying genetic risk for these disorders.

A primary element of modern wildfire management is to aggressively suppress small fires before they become large, but benefits can be offset by the fact that these practices promote older forests that are more ‘flammable’. Here the authors show that this downside puts numerous human communities at elevated risk of fires in boreal Canada.

Over the past 40 years, 42% of tropical and subtropical ecosystems have experienced an increase in plant reliance on past precipitation, consistent with greening during the late growing season in drylands and drying during the wet-to-dry period in non-drylands.

Field survey data from 1,034 bird species worldwide are used to show that species’ sensitivities to habitat fragmentation are more strongly related to their dispersal ability than to latitude and past habitat disturbance, and that variation in dispersal ability is in turn strongly associated with climate.

The relationships that control seed production in trees are key to understand evolutionary pressures that have shaped forests. A global synthesis of fecundity data reveals that while seed production is not constrained by a strict size-number trade-off, it is influenced by taxonomy and nutrient allocation.

Vast areas of the Amazon forest have been lost to agriculture in recent decades. This study assesses the potential of intensification—increasing yields on a given area—to produce more soybean in Brazil without further Amazon forest loss and to reduce existing CO₂ emissions.

Many models assume a universal carbon use efficiency across forest biomes, in contrast to assumptions of other process-based models. Here the authors analyse forest production efficiency across a wide range of climates to show a positive relationship with annual temperature and precipitation, indicating that ecosystem models are overestimating forest carbon losses under warming.