A century of forest time

Forest ecologist Daisy Dent, a senior scientist at ETH Zurich, oversees research plots at Barro Colorado Nature Monument in central Panama, some dating to the nineteenth century.

Tropical forests store vast carbon

Tropical forests like these account for around forty percent of carbon stored on land, making them the planet's biggest terrestrial carbon sink.

Monocultures may be expensive mistakes

Dent's research challenges typical carbon-crediting schemes that plant huge areas with a single tree species.

Barro Colorado's unique history

Barro Colorado is a reserve covering forested peninsulas and islands that formed when construction of the Panama Canal flooded the area in nineteen fourteen.

Animals plant most tropical trees

Fruit-eating animals including spider monkeys, bats, and parrots are responsible for planting more than seventy percent of trees in tropical forests.

Diverse forests versus single species

A seventy-year-old patch with diverse trees shows the work of many animals creating a canopy approaching ancient jungle structure.

Vast areas could regenerate naturally

A two thousand twenty-four estimate in Nature found that some two hundred fifteen million hectares of forest worldwide, an area larger than Mexico, could regenerate naturally.

“Tropical forests are underpinned by this massive network of interactions.”

The trillion-tree moment

In two thousand fifteen, as the Paris Agreement was codified, forest recovery seized global attention.

From despair to restoration

As a PhD student around two thousand, Dent researched old-growth forests in northern Borneo but felt hopeless watching landscapes felled for palm oil plantations.

Secondary forests now dominate tropics

Secondary forests, ones that grow naturally after the original forest was lost, had been a niche research area.

Young forests capture carbon fastest

A two thousand sixteen Nature paper showed that a hectare of naturally regenerated secondary forest can capture eleven times as much carbon each year as an old-growth one.

Regeneration without planting seeds

A two thousand twenty-two study published by the Royal Society showed that locations like Barro Colorado are among the best-case scenarios for forest recovery without planting a single seed.

Degraded sites need intervention

In Panama, Dent works with nonprofits and carbon-crediting schemes to fast-track recovery through mapped corridors reconnecting forest fragments and plans to reintroduce animals in silent forests.

High-quality credits command premiums

Dent works with the London-based carbon-crediting startup Ponterra to develop solutions for southern Panama. While credits can be bought for as little as five dollars per metric ton, corporate giants such as Microsoft have paid…

Droughts force a reckoning

As droughts hit Latin America, policymakers may face shortcomings of cookie-cutter plantations.Dent says monocultures have much reduced resilience when facing extreme events like droughts, floods, heat, or pathogens.

“I think there's an increasing recognition that we can't just plant trees. We have to rebuild a system.”