Emilio Vilanova
@evilanova.bsky.social
Venezuelan | 🌳 Forest ecologist /scientist. Senior Program Officer - Forest Carbon (ARR | IFM) @VERRA. Views and opinions are my own en English & Español.
Newly found earthworks suggest that about 3 million people might have lived in just about 3% of the Amazon rainforest’s entire area. https://scim.ag/45BE4Cx
Odd shapes hidden in dense Amazon rainforest reveal sprawling ancient civilization
Newly found earthworks suggest about 3 million people might have lived in just about 3% of the forest’s entire area
scim.ag
Satellite-based analyses systematically underestimate carbon accumulation in mature forests. This study illustrates the importance of independent lines of evidence and suggests that terrestrial carbon budgets need to account for forest structure. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Widespread carbon accumulation in mature forests remains underestimated by satellite observations - Nature Ecology & Evolution
The authors combine satellites, repeat airborne lidar, dynamic global vegetation models and field plot monitoring across the conterminous USA to show widespread continued carbon accumulation in mature...
nature.com
I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.
July 2026 #Arctic sea ice extent was the 6th lowest on record for the month... This was 1,760,000 km² below the 1981-2010 average. July ice extent is decreasing at about 6.80% per decade. Data: @nsidc.bsky.social at nsidc.org/data/seaice_...
New publication in Ambio Stakeholders’ perspectives on barriers and pathways toward the diversification of planted forests Open access link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Stakeholders’ perspectives on barriers and pathways toward the diversification of planted forests - Ambio
Mixed planted forests (MPFs) are often considered more resilient to climate change and provide greater environmental benefits than monocultures. Yet, monocultures dominate tree plantation systems glob...
link.springer.com
Fires in Europe are breaking records: here’s what the future holds www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Fires in Europe are breaking records: here’s what the future holds
Countries such as Spain and France can expect fire regimes more like those of California as climate change favours hot, dry conditions, scientists suggest.
nature.com
RESEARCH ARTICLE Rapid and Intense Declines of Forest Connectivity in the Amazon Arc of Deforestation Over Four Decades 🔗 buff.ly/6W7JrgZ
RESEARCH ARTICLE Canada's Forests Are Shifting From a Recovery‐Driven Carbon Sink to a Disturbance‐Driven Carbon Source 🔗 buff.ly/Ukv3ii2
Over 250,000 hectares of land has burnt across European Union, with 1254 fires detected since start of the year. As wildfires become more frequent, intense & complex, reliable monitoring, forecasting, cross-border data sharing & #EarlyWarnings are critical to protect lives, livelihoods & ecosystems.
Tropical forests can recover rapidly after disturbance, but certain old-growth specialist trees will be missing. A study in Costa Rica shows that low abundance and low seed production hold back these trees, suggesting targeted plantings could help. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/Shla50ZtWMN
Happy to have been involved in this work. How a rush for minerals is causing deforestation in tropical regions www.nature.com/articles/d41...
How a rush for minerals is causing deforestation in tropical regions
An analysis of the extent to which mining caused deforestation between 2001 and 2020 in areas near mines in sub-Saharan Africa could help conservation efforts.
nature.com
Research co-led by postdoc Amelia Holcomb synthesized data from 146 tropical forests to improve carbon accounting & climate reporting. The findings show degraded forests can recover carbon faster than forests regrowing after complete clearing. 🌎🌿 🔗 geog.umd.edu/featured-con...
New Database Improves Carbon Accounting for Tropical Forests
geog.umd.edu
Height does not impair the hydraulic system of the tallest tropical Dipterocarp trees www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... - good to see our #MetabolicScalingTheory predictions we made for scaling of hydraulic resistance and xylem anatomy hold up in some of the tallest trees #allometry #megabiota 🧪🌾🌐
Height does not impair the hydraulic system of the tallest tropical Dipterocarp trees
Half of the aboveground biomass in forests is stored in a disproportionately small number of very tall trees. These giants are predicted to be more vulnerable to drought-induced damage because height ...
science.org
Climate change projected to increase background mortality rates in eastern North America onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
Climate Change Projected to Increase Rates of Background Tree Mortality Across Eastern North America
Background tree mortality is the ambient, natural death of trees that occurs without major disturbances. Using data from more than 24,000 forest plots across Canada and the United States, we found th...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
“So next time someone tells you Canada’s fires can be solved by raking the forests, you can point out that the thing filling their sky with smoke is a lightning-struck, drought-primed boreal forest doing what a warming climate is making it do more and more often.”
Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest management
Higher fire season temperatures are strongly correlated with increased area burned
theclimatebrink.com
TreeMig framework ver. 1.0: an R package with GUI to simulate spatio-temporal forest dynamics vist.ly/5bsm6 #Rpackage #Modelling #VegetationDynamics
news.mongabay.com/2026/07/cutt...
Cutting back vines lets recovering forests grow faster, Borneo study shows
As the world faces the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, researchers are trying to understand how to restore degraded forests to most effectively sequester carbon, benefit biodivers...
news.mongabay.com
ICYMI: New online! Remote sensing delivers tropical forest resilience monitoring for the Global Biodiversity Framework
Remote sensing delivers tropical forest resilience monitoring for the Global Biodiversity Framework
Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s44358-026-00178-6Advances in remote sensing now enable the detection of multiple properties of tropical forest biodiversity. This Review discusses how remotely sensed biodiversity facets and essential biodiversity variables can be used to draw inference about tropical forest resilience to global change.
dlvr.it
Warm, wet springs may raise tree death risk, not just drought. French forest data indicate favorable early growth can leave some trees, especially tall ones, more vulnerable when later dry conditions arrive. doi.org/hb9nzf
Why Europe's trees are dying
In Europe, trees are increasingly dying prematurely. A new study by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) on French forests now shows that it is not only drought but also unusually warm or wet springs that increase the risk—even ideal growing conditions can prove fatal later on.
phys.org
Nature research paper: The forest of knowledge under global change go.nature.com/4paKpO9
The forest of knowledge under global change - Nature
The biocultural heritage of the Amazon, its plant species, plant services and cultures are at risk from climate change.
go.nature.com
Why doesn't tropical forest biomass track increasing productivity with higher soil fertility? Wong et al. @michellewongca.bsky.social @jane-lucas-phd.bsky.social @kaaze7.bsky.social @cushmankc.bsky.social @dallingjim.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
I was interviewed by @science.org for this piece on giant trees and drought resilience. An impressive study, but it doesn't overturn previous work: drought responses depend on the forest, the type of drought, and tree traits www.science.org/content/arti...
Being a taller tree doesn’t doom you to drought after all
New study challenges idea that tall trees’ hydraulics make them more vulnerable to dry conditions
science.org
Science Magazine@science.org · last mo.New research on Southeast Asian dipterocarps, the tallest tropical trees, shows that they adjust their hydraulic system as they grow tall, suggesting resilience to drought. Learn more this week in Science: https://scim.ag/4eOcwhy
Unprecedented Amazonian rainforest damage during the 2023–2024 droughts ... "...these forests are approaching the limits of their preindustrial operating space." 🧪🌾🌐https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2514066123
Unprecedented Amazonian rainforests damage during the 2023–2024 droughts | PNAS
Between 2023 and 2024, Amazonian rainforests experienced two consecutive, record-breaking droughts—each more intense than any previously observed—y...
pnas.org
Accelerated tree mortality after a half-century of stability in an old-growth forest: Insights from a 72-year study www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Accelerated tree mortality after a half-century of stability in an old-growth forest: Insights from a 72-year study
Although considered a relatively stable successional stage, old-growth forests can be dynamic, owing to both endogenous (life history, population dyna…
sciencedirect.com
New analysis examines how deforestation in the Amazon affects rainfall and forest stability. Changes to the land surface may feedback strongly on atmospheric exchanges, affecting rainfall conditions in other locations. The study identifies key hotspots of vulnerability. 🧪 1/
⚒️ Article: Natural forest expansion rivals secondary forests, storing more carbon and helping offset tropical deforestation www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Natural forest expansion is a larger carbon sink than secondary forests in moist tropics - Nature Geoscience
Natural expansion of tropical moist forests sequesters more above-ground carbon than post-deforestation secondary forest regrowth, according to satellite-derived forest cover change and LiDAR-derived ...
nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Natural forest expansion is a larger carbon sink than secondary forests in moist tropics - Nature Geoscience
Natural expansion of tropical moist forests sequesters more above-ground carbon than post-deforestation secondary forest regrowth, according to satellite-derived forest cover change and LiDAR-derived ...
nature.com
New paper from Sruthi Krishna Moorthy and @ymalhi.bsky.social examines 60 years of tropical ecology research 🌍 The study highlights the growing dominance of tropical forest research and persistent global inequities in tropical ecology authorship. doi.org/10.1111/btp....
Shifting Trends in Tropical Ecology Research Over Six Decades
We analyzed over 170,000 tropical ecology publications (1960–2023) using a large language model to extract study location and biome information at scale. We show that research has grown across all bi....
doi.org
Liana cutting accelerates the structural recovery of once-logged tropical forests at a fraction of the cost of tree planting: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...
Liana cutting accelerates the structural recovery of once-logged tropical forests at a fraction of the cost of tree planting
Jackson et al. focus on forest restoration in logged dipterocarp-dominated forests using an 18-year, 500-ha experiment in Borneo. This study demonstrates that liana cutting reduces tree mortality and ...
cell.com
