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Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) has been widely discussed as a way of mitigating climate change while concurrently benefitting biodiversity. This study combines a global land-use model and spatial data on species distributions to quantify the potential impacts of REDD in avoiding global species extinctions.

Preventing deforestation—a key goal of international climate policy—can incur an opportunity cost for local communities who depend on forest resources for their livelihoods. A study compares the cost of carbon conservation through forest protection with that of a scheme that directly alleviates the demand for forest conversion.

Tree cover gains in the moist tropics (1982–2015) were 56% naturally regenerated forests and 27% managed tree systems, with forest type influencing carbon recovery. Effective forest restoration requires robust tracking of forest types established by restoration efforts.

Natural ecosystems and biodiversity must be made a bulwark against climate change, not a casualty of it, argue Will R. Turner, Michael Oppenheimer and David S. Wilcove.

A strategy to improve the implementation of nature-based climate solutions in global forests for climate mitigation is described, comprising four key components to highlight notable science and policy considerations and providing solutions to improve rigour.

Prodiginines are a family of secondary metabolites produced by Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria that have anticancer and immunosuppressive activities. The biosynthesis of these tripyrrole red pigments is reviewed, together with a discussion of the exquisite regulation of the production of these molecules, and why bacteria might benefit from producing such complex products.

An estimated area of 215 million hectares has the potential for natural forest regeneration across tropical forested countries and biomes, representing an above-ground carbon sequestration potential of 23.4 Gt C.

Multicriteria optimization identifies global priority areas for ecosystem restoration and estimates their benefits for biodiversity and climate, providing cost–benefit analyses that highlight the importance of optimizing spatial planning and incorporating several biomes in restoration strategies.

Nature-based climate solutions are widely incorporated into climate change mitigation plans and need firm scientific foundations. Through literature review and expert elicitation, this analysis shows that for some major pathways there is strong support, while for others their efficacy remains uncertain.

Estimates of global forest area vary widely; this discrepancy is now shown to originate primarily from ambiguity in the definition of ‘forest’. Monitoring and reporting should focus on measures more directly relevant to ecosystem function.

Given the unique characteristics of the agrifood sector, a review of six potential policy paths for greenhouse gas emission reductions shows innovative green farming practices — such as alternate wetting and drying for rice and better animal feeding techniques — as the most promising and attractive path. These approaches can rapidly and substantially lower emissions, address leakage, raise farmer incomes and reduce food prices through partial repurposing of existing farm support.

Bacteria can use extracellular contractile injection systems (eCISs) to inject toxic proteins into eukaryotic cells. Here, Vladimirov et al. provide evidence that the main role of eCISs in Streptomyces is not to attack other species, but to modulate the complex Streptomyces developmental process.

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.

Correlated errors coming from leakage out of the computational subspace are an obstacle to fault-tolerant superconducting circuits. Here, the authors use a multi-level reset protocol to improve the performances of a bit-flip error correcting code by reducing the magnitude of correlations.

Aarrestad et al. show that, in contrast to psychedelics, the nonhallucinogenic psychoplastogen tabernanthalog promotes neuroplasticity through 5-HT_2AR activation without immediately increasing extracellular glutamate levels or immediate early gene expression.

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.

Forest fragmentation is thought to reduce carbon storage at forest edges. Here, using remote sensing datasets, the authors show that biomass is 25% lower within 500 m of the forest edge, and suggest that fragmentation results in a global reduction in tropical forest carbon stocks by nearly 10%.

Mangrove forests protect communities from storms and support fisheries. Here, the authors show that the association with economic growth has shifted from negatively impacting mangroves to enabling mangrove expansion, and that community forestry is promoting mangrove expansion.

Deforestation and drainage have made Indonesian peatlands susceptible to burning. Here the authors find that Indonesia’s 2015 fires resulted in economic losses totaling US$28 billion, while the area burned and emissions released could have been significantly reduced had restoration been completed.

Cosmic rays flying through superconducting quantum devices create bursts of excitations that destroy qubit coherence. Rapid, spatially resolved measurements of qubit error rates make it possible to observe the evolution of the bursts across a chip.

Premarineosin A, a potent and selective antimalarial natural product, is a promising yet underexplored scaffold due to its limited availability and synthetic complexity. Here, the authors employ metabolic engineering and late-stage functionalization to enhance the production of premarineosin A and unveil analogs with enhanced potency.

Changes in land use threaten the stability of carbon in Peru’s peatlands, which store almost as much carbon as the entirety of the above-ground Peruvian carbon stock but in 5% of the land area, according to maps of the extent and depth of peat.

Quantifying forest degradation and biodiversity losses is necessary to inform conservation and restoration policies. Here the authors analyze a large dataset for the Atlantic Forest in South America to quantify losses in forest biomass and tree species richness, functional traits, and conservation value.

Deforestation is the second largest anthropogenic source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, after fossil fuel combustion. Following a budget reanalysis, the contribution from deforestation is revised downwards, but tropical peatlands emerge as a notable carbon dioxide source.

During a period of drought, an intact tropical peatland in Indonesia released half the amount of greenhouse gases as was released from a degraded site, according to a direct comparison of eddy covariance measurements at a pair of peatland sites in Sumatra.

Most studies on HIV-1 proviruses that persist during antiretroviral therapy have focused on males with HIV-1 subtype B, even though the majority of people living with HIV globally have non-B subtypes. Here, the authors describe the proviral genetic landscape of HIV-1 subtypes A1 and D in Ugandan females and males using near-full-length proviral sequencing. The authors also describe a molecular assay for intact proviral quantification of these HIV-1 subtypes.

Biodiversity is positively associated with carbon density in highly disturbed tropical forests, but this relationship breaks down in relatively undisturbed areas. Consequently, carbon conservation schemes can fail to protect the most ecologically valuable forests.

Policies aiming to preserve vegetated coastal ecosystems (VCE) to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions require national assessments of blue carbon resources. Here the authors assessed organic carbon storage in VCE across Australian and the potential annual CO₂ emission benefits of VCE conservation and find that Australia contributes substantially the carbon stored in VCE globally.

Oil palm production in Indonesia has expanded by converting more natural ecosystems to agricultural ones. This study finds large yield gaps among large and smallholder farms there, suggesting improved management could increase production while sparing fragile ecosystems.

Sinclair et al. explore the contribution of chronic inflammation to cardiovascular symptoms associated with post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC-CVS). The authors identify trace levels of inflammatory cytokines in individuals with PASC-CVS that impair the function of cardiomyocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells.

Transcription factor decoys, DNA molecules designed to mimic regulatory DNAs and prevent repressors binding to their DNA targets, are used to achieve de-repression of silent biosynthetic gene clusters, resulting in production of new natural products.

A new approach is outlined for capturing multiple facets of biodiversity in near real-time by combining the latest advances in automated Earth observation recording, high-throughput sequencing and ecological modelling.

Tropical forests could offset much of the carbon released from the declining use of fossil fuels, helping to stabilize and then reduce atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, thereby providing a bridge to a low-fossil-fuel future.

Despite projections of a severe extinction event, a window of opportunity is now open for a mix of policies to avoid biodiversity collapse in the Cerrado hotspot.

Trees come in all shapes and size, but what drives this incredible variation in tree form remains poorly understood. Using a global dataset, the authors show that a combination of climate, competition, disturbance and evolutionary history shape the crown architecture of the world’s trees and thereby constrain the 3D structure of woody ecosystems.

The role of Blue Carbon in climate change mitigation and adaptation has now reached international prominence. Here the authors identified the top-ten unresolved questions in the field and find that most questions relate to the precise role blue carbon can play in mitigating climate change and the most effective management actions in maximising this.

As the SARS-SoV-2 pandemic progressed and the vaccinated population increased, a number of variants of concerns that circumvented the vaccine induced immunity emerged. Here the authors compare SARS-SoV-2 mRNA vaccine responses in pregnant women and other people, characterising the antibody response and Fc functions, and potency against a range of variants of concern.