Research News

The Bezos Earth Fund made a $12 million dollar grant to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where the ForestGEO network has been tracking individual trees for the past 40 years to understand tropical forest dynamics.

The GEO-TREES project will provide highly accurate estimates of the carbon stored by different forests around the globe based on on-the-ground tree measurements, with terrestrial and aerial laser scans (LiDAR).

One of the largest trees on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. Tropical forests pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere where it causes global warming and store it as wood. But the amount of carbon stored varies depending on tree species, age, climate conditions and other factors.

One of the largest trees on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. Tropical forests pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere where it causes global warming and store it as wood. But the amount of carbon stored varies depending on tree species, age, climate conditions and other factors.

Nine marks identified as cut marks (mark numbers 1–4 and 7–11) and two identified as tooth marks (mark numbers 5 and 6) based on

Grunts and horse-eye jack fish swim above a reef in Hol Chan Marine Reserve near Ambergris Cay, Belize. (Photo by Pete Oxford)

Susan Cook-Patton, an ecologist with The Nature Conservancy, inside one of BiodiversiTREE’s natural regeneration plots. (Credit: Susan Cook-Patton)

Jamie Pullen, head technician of the Terrestrial Ecology Lab that runs BiodiversiTREE. (Credit: Stephen Voss/Smithsonian)

A plot with 12 tree species in the forest restoration experiment BiodiversiTREE, planted at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Now in its 10th year, BiodiversiTREE has revealed that more diverse forest restorations are less likely to suffer planting failures.