Credit: Chuck Fazio

Find out what’s happened this past week in the world of forestry!

New research from the Technical University of Munich has found that, on average, trees are growing faster today than they were in the 1960s. The growth rate of urban trees was also found to be up to 25 percent higher than rural trees. It’s hypothesized that climate change is responsible for the increased average growth rate, as warmer temperatures allow trees and other plans to extend the amount of time photosynthesizing. The higher rate of urban growth is thought to be a result of warmer air being created by pavement, streets, sidewalks, carparks and buildings. Higher growth rates mean trees are aging faster, and potentially dying earlier than their rural counterparts.

Aspen Forests and the Appeal for PhotographersColorado Springs Independent

Photographer Sean Cayton highlights the appeal of forests full of aspen, as well as showcasing some of the stunning photos he’s snapped.

At the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (known informally as COP23), it was announced that $2.1 billion has been committed to forest restoration in Latin America and the Caribbean. The money is funded through private investments in the World Resources Institute, and will go towards restoring degraded forests and replanting land that has been deforested for decades.

Recent research has found that biodiversity in forests is strongly correlated to the amount of carbon stored in the ecosystem, according to a study published by researchers at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent in the U.K. The researchers hope that these new findings will allow high-carbon forests to be marked as priority areas for conservation, considering that they allow for a greater net biodiversity in a global ecosystem.

After vandals destroyed over 70 trees in a park in Bradenton, Fla., the community rallied together to replace what was lost. The trees were chopped down overnight last May, and the vandals are still at large. In response to the loss, the community decided to hold a tree-planting event, along with a naming ceremony. Each of the trees planted will be named after a community member, to give a sense of ownership to the park.