Find out the latest in forestry news in this week’s Forest Digest!

lake and forest
Credit: Chuck Fazio.
  • Fossil of oldest pine tree discoveredBBC
    Scientists believe they have discovered the fossil of a 140-million-year-old pine tree, the oldest currently known, in Nova Scotia, Canada.
  • NASA to 3D map the world’s forests using space lasersGrist
    Using satellites and lasers, NASA is working on an initiative to create a 3D map of the planet’s forests in order to more accurately determine forest carbon sequestration estimates, including how much carbon would be released from removing a forest and how much would be sequestered it a new one was replanted in its place.
  • Indonesia Can Now Track Forest Carbon With 95 Percent Certainty, But Peat Proves ProblematicHuffington Post
    Indonesia, which recently surpassed Brazil as the deforestation capital of the world, has plans for a national carbon accounting system that will track “carbon flux” with nearly 95% accuracy by 2018; however, the threat of peat, and the levels of carbon dioxide and methane it releases, could be a serious problem.
  • US forests struggle as drought and climate change bite — ClimateChangeNews.com
    New research by a professor and his colleagues from Duke University reveals that drought and the impacts of climate change are posing a stronger threat to almost all forests across the continental U.S. than previously thought.