Resin from damar (Shorea Javanica) trees provides livelihoods in Lampung, Indonesia. Ulet Ifansasti, CIFOR

Best of Landscape News 2020: Forests and Restoration

Our pick of this year’s top stories
22 December 2020

Forests are integral to many landscapes and provide habitat, food and ecosystems services to so many forms of life. However, many of our forests are being degraded from deforestation and fires, with striking images of record forest fires in Australia and the western U.S. and large-scale logging in the Amazon rainforest within our newsfeeds. But it’s not all bad news – major restoration efforts, such as the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, are bringing global attention and funding on regrowing lost forests, and tree-planting is having a heyday in the general zeitgeist. Here is a selection of the best articles exploring forests and restoration in Landscape News.

Forgotten Forests

A serial exploration into the planet’s most precious – yet neglected – tropical forests


Mangrove forests: the muddy mazes that stash carbon and hide secrets

The humid entanglements filled with food and teeming with life

Raíces de los bosques de manglares a lo largo de la costa en el Parque Nacional de Bali Occidental en Indonesia. La nación archipiélago alberga casi un cuarto de todos los manglares del mundo. Aulia Erlangga, CIFOR
Raíces de los bosques de manglares a lo largo de la costa en el Parque Nacional de Bali Occidental en Indonesia. La nación archipiélago alberga casi un cuarto de todos los manglares del mundo. Aulia Erlangga, CIFOR

What do we talk about when we talk about tree-planting?

Trees are having a heyday in the headlines, but we must be careful what we say

Eucalyptus trees, right, cleared for tree plantations Kenya's Mau Forest area, where trees are crucial for protecting the water supply for 3 million people. Patrick Shepherd, CIFOR
Eucalyptus trees, right, cleared for tree plantations Kenya’s Mau Forest area, where trees are crucial for protecting the water supply for 3 million people. Patrick Shepherd, CIFOR

Araucariaceae: the ancient giants that are the world’s rarest trees

Finding the few remaining species of a tree family that has survived 200 million years

Araucarias grow in Argentina. Mariano Mantel, Flickr
Araucarias grow in Argentina. Mariano Mantel, Flickr

Drones, dogs, ‘cocoons’ – it’s a new age for tree planting

A look at the technologies changing the way tree seeds are planted

Women carrying acacia seedlings to be planted. Fiston Wasanga, CIFOR
Women carrying acacia seedlings to be planted. Fiston Wasanga, CIFOR

4.06 billion remaining hectares, and other new numbers on forests… But what do they mean?

Putting the new U.N. report on global forests into context

A forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where management plans have grown to now cover 20 million hectares of forests, despite the increasingly rate of forest area loss in Africa. Axel Fassio, CIFOR
A forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where management plans have grown to now cover 20 million hectares of forests, despite the increasingly rate of forest area loss in Africa. Axel Fassio, CIFOR

How did deforestation lead to the rise of COVID-19?

GLF Live with Musonda Mumba, Robert Nasi and Annika Terrana

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