This week’s Nature covered the dense fog of Thailand’s Kaeng Krachan National Park. This national park is one of Thailand’s best-preserved natural areas, and from December to March the morning mist creates a spectacular sight.
Like all life on Earth, forests face a climate crisis. This week’s Nature dealt with the vulnerability and potential resilience of the world’s forests due to global warming through six papers.
Since forest science is a convergence science, researchers in various majors have collected the research results of forest analysis. Ecologists and botanists have measured tree growth and soil nutrients in thousands of forests around the world, while physicists have used remote sensing data generated by drones and satellites to monitor forest biomass. Experimental scientists have studied how global warming might affect the world’s forests by changing factors such as temperature and carbon dioxide.
Over the past 35 years, the mortality rate of trees in 24 tropical Australian areas has doubled, according to a research team at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Research Institute. A team of researchers from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Global Change Biology said that changes in temperature and precipitation changed the growth and survival rates of trees in the forest. All of these are the result of climate change such as global warming.
Data is still lacking. Although there are individual research results, it means that it is insufficient for an integrated understanding of forests. Nature points out through the editor’s note that continuous and long-term observation is necessary to obtain comprehensive data on forests. He also said that research should be conducted flexibly, such as sharing earth observation data in cooperation with space agencies. Sufficient financial support is also essential to support this.
A team of researchers from the University of Florence, Italy, in the paper, says 20 years of satellite data indicate that a quarter of the world’s intact forests are at risk of extinction. Forest research requires a long-term view spanning several decades. Climate change has already reached our chin, but if we forget to take care of our planet and forests even now, we may lose our chance to turn it around. “Before it’s too late, we need to get the pulse of the forest,” the team said.