Conservation / Tree Health

By Sanjana Gajbhiye                       

When we talk about plastic pollution, oceans and rivers dominate the conversation. Beaches lined with plastic bottles have become the symbol of this crisis. Farms and city streets also show clear signs of contamination. But forests? Few would imagine plastic reaching there.

Researchers at TU Darmstadt have shown otherwise. Their study reveals, for the first time, that forest soils carry large amounts of microplastics.

Dr Ed Pyne snips a leaf from the Druids Oak, an 800-year-old tree that has watched over this woodland in Buckinghamshire for centuries, enduring droughts, storms, heatwaves and more.

"We know that this tree is a survivor," he says, taking a leaf sample for DNA testing.

"Is it just that it's got lucky? Has it led a stress-free life? Or is there something special about the genes of this tree?"

The conservation scientist from the charity, The Woodland Trust, thinks the secrets of such remarkable resilience lie in its DNA.

by Kristen Munson, University of Vermont

Near the bottom of a shady hillside in Jericho, a lone beech tree stretches high into the canopy, a relic of a bygone forest. Through luck or (hopefully) genetics, this mighty tree has avoided contracting beech bark disease—a fatal fungal pathogen that has proven deadly to mature beech trees. And it stands just outside a hotspot where a new pathogen called beech leaf disease (BLD) is spreading across Vermont forests.

By Jordan Joseph

Botanists confirmed recently that a towering tree discovered in Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains is an entirely new species, Tessmannia princeps.

The research team is led by Andrea Bianchi, a horticulturist and researcher at Muse Science Museum in Trento, whose group worked with Tanzanian experts to document the species and its remote habitat.

Bianchi and local plant specialists were mapping plants in the Boma la Mzinga and Uluti Village Land Forest Reserves in 2019 when they nearly walked into a gray‑barked giant they could not name.

A new study published in Nature Communications has found that 17.31% of tropical tree cover—an area spanning 395.9 million hectares (Mha)—has been consistently overlooked by global forest monitoring systems, exposing significant gaps in efforts to track deforestation and ecological degradation.

 by University of Birmingham

Scientists have used clues locked into tree rings to reveal major changes in the Amazon's rainfall cycle over the last 40 years: wet seasons are getting wetter and dry seasons drier.

Oxygen isotope signals in rings from two Amazon tree species allowed the international research team to reconstruct seasonal changes in rainfall for the recent past.

On a windswept plateau high above the Arabian Sea, Sena Keybani cradles a sapling that barely reaches her ankle.

The young plant, protected by a makeshift fence of wood and wire, is a kind of dragon’s blood tree – a species found only on the Yemeni island of Socotra that is now struggling to survive intensifying threats from climate change.

“Seeing the trees die, it’s like losing one of your babies,” said Keybani, whose family runs a nursery dedicated to preserving the species.

ByJordan Joseph

Beneath the sandstone cliffs of Wollemi National Park, an unassuming evergreen has stirred curiosity among plant lovers and conservationists alike. It looks like any other conifer from a distance, but it carries a backstory that stretches to the age of dinosaurs.

Scientists only realized its significance in 1994, when a group trekking along a narrow canyon stumbled upon it. Among them was David Noble, a field officer from the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.

by Zeina Mohammed, University of Virginia        

If you're wondering why squirrels seem to vastly outnumber raccoons—or why certain car brands dominate city streets—a team of University of Virginia researchers may be able to help.

by University of Exeter

The arrival of new plant pests and diseases is likely to severely damage UK trees and woodlands in the coming decades, new research shows.

The ash dieback epidemic prompted the government to assess all pests and diseases that could potentially enter the UK and affect our trees and agricultural crops.