News and Insights Meet a Pinecone Cowboy Pinecone cowboys are skilled climbers who harvest cones from threatened western trees to help reforest landscapes damaged by megafires and climate change. Learn how their work supports the genetic future of Western forests and how precarious the future of their field has become. Read more What Does It…

News and Insights 24 Newly Discovered Species Potentially At Risk From Undersea Mining The discovery of 24 new species and an entirely new evolutionary branch deep in the central Pacific highlight the risk of an untold number of species disappearing due to seabed mining.  Read more Hawaii Shows Us How Removing Invasive Species Supports Significant…

News and Insights From reshaping water systems to supporting fish, birds, amphibians, and even helping to fight wildfires, beavers don’t just build dams, they transform entire landscapes. In honor of April 7’s International Beaver Day, we take you to visit the world’s largest beaver dam, a structure so big it can be seen from space. …

News and Insights Is Nature Restoration More Effective When It’s Community-Led?  A global study by climate researchers found that the success of restoration efforts hinges on the involvement of local communities. From England to India to Africa and beyond, they determined that restoration can more effectively reverse degradation, address root causes, and benefit local people…

Celebration of Life March 14, 2026 Program The complete program is below. Not all remarks are available. Prelude Hilary Hahn – Felix Mendelssohn Violin Concerto Welcome Christina Dominique-Pierre Keeping Quiet, by Pablo Neruda Now we will count to twelveand we will all keep stillfor once on the face of the earth,let’s not speak in any…

News and Insights Sharing Land With Trees: An Essay on Global Climatic Implications of Forest-Human Coexistence We talk a lot about what forests give us. But what if they’re actually running the water cycle that makes life on land possible in the first place? Anastassia Makarieva, Andrei Nefiodov, and Ugo Bardi make the case that trees don’t just…

Proforestation Beyond the Human:Forests, Climate Emergency, and the Undoing of Mastery Author: Pavan Muntha Abstract This article develops a philosophical and ecological argument for proforestation, understood as allowing existing forests to grow into their full ecological complexity, as a response to the climate emergency. It critiques the dominant human-centred framing in proforestation and forest–climate debates, in…

News and Insights Group of “Water Guardians” In Hungary Seeks to Restore Land After years of severe drought across the Great Hungarian Plain, farmers are taking steps to bring water back to their land. Through a partnership with a local thermal spa, overflow water is being used to flood various fields in an attempt to…

News and Insights The Power of Restoring Ponds to Boost Britain’s Climate Resilience When we think of bodies of water, ponds are not often thought of as the most “important.” Though small and oft-overlooked, ponds are crucial to storing water and supporting biodiversity. Ponds act as buffers during floods and periods of drought in ways…

News and Insights Seabirds Determined as Essential to Healthy Ecosystems The life of a seabird includes two major phases: their life at sea, and the times when they return to land to breed. Through these cycles, seabirds bring ocean-derived nutrients to their colonies on land, initiating a transfer of nutrients that land ecosystems would otherwise…

News and Insights Shaping a Vocabulary for Ecological Design – Stir World If the point of science might be to understand and inform how we live and coexist, then design shapes the very choices we make in response. More than Human is an exhibition at the Design Museum in London that reimagines how we might…

In Biodiversity as Climate Infrastructure, Poulomi Chakravarty explores micrometeorology—the science of small-scale exchanges of heat, water, and gases between land, plants, and air. It shows how forests, wetlands, and even animals influence evaporation, rainfall, and temperature through hidden processes that quietly stabilize our climate. The article opens a window into this overlooked science, inviting us to see biodiversity not just as life on Earth, but as the machinery that regulates the atmosphere itself.

How Trees & Forests Shape Our Climate How trees and forests interact with wind, water, wildlife and carbon to cool our climate and bring rain February 5 – March 26, 2026 Thursdays — 12:00 Noon ET Featured Guest Speakers Anastassia Makarieva, PhD – February 5 Judith D. Schwartz – February 12 John Feldman – February…

Courses News and Insights Events and Community

Courses News and Insights Events and Community

Introduction by Jim Laurie Erling Jorgensen was a student in my “Systems Thinking and Scenario Building” course (Biodiversity 6) in the summer of 2022.  He is determined to learn how life processes work and develop a scenario of restoring these processes.  His goal is also to create a story that young people and adults with…

The more we disturb intact ecosystems, the less stable the climate that we have. Do we have systematic evidence-based resources to prove how natural ecosystems stabilize climate? Yes, we do! It would be helpful for science communicators and policymakers to have a resource with systematized evidence. For example:Primary forests have higher resilience against droughts than…

We are excited to share with you the panel discussion from the Boston Premiere of the film Regenerating Life!  It was such a full day with three parts to the film, interesting exhibitors, and reconnecting with friends, that it was difficult to take it all in at once.   You can share some of that excitement from…

Experience the enlightening panel discussion that followed the Boston Film Premiere of “Regenerating Life,” a groundbreaking three-part documentary that delves into the vital role of biodiversity and natural ecosystems in climate regulation. This panel discussion, recorded on October 14th, 2023, at Tufts University, brings together key figures from the film and experts in the field.…

Dr. Makarieva explains why protecting existing forests is one of the most important things we can do to stabilize the climate. Pending legislation in MA (USA) serves as a model for policy protections needed around the world. Learn more about taking action here, and find out more at Save Mass Forests. Our climate system is incredibly…

Our Boston Premiere of Regenerating Life at Tufts University was a tremendous success! It was exciting to see about 100 people come together to experience how John Feldman wove the many threads of the importance of nature to climate stability together in film. Conversation was lively during the lunch break, as people talked with exhibitors…

Dr. Makarieva and Dr. Nefiodov will be presenting their scientific findings at universities throughout the United States from September 21 – October 14 on the importance of water and healthy forests. This important research is fundamental to the role of ecosystems in climate stability. Check here below for locations near you. This U.S. tour includes…

Biodiversity 9 Deep DiveTransformation to a Holistic Perspective – Nature Can Cool the Planet Fall 2023, Wednesdays, September 20 – December 13 Are you ready to transform your understanding of how life on the planet works and how we can play a role? Join us as we follow the transformation of two leading writers and…

Voices of Waterfor Climate global research on the role of water in cooling our planet Global restoration of natural water cycles is absolutelyessential for biodiversity and climate restoration. Vision Rehydrating the continents to restore natural water cycles and climate. Mission Educating globally to empower people to act locally to renew natural small water cycles to…

In a time of accelerating global warming, nature’s ability to cool the Earth is one of the most exciting and important prospects we can explore. We’ve been proud to host scientific experts at the forefront of this research like Dr. Anastassia Makarieva, Andrei Nefiodov, and Jan Pokorny. They joined us a couple of months ago…

Droughts and flash floods are becoming a new normal in our warming world. What changed? Our landscapes are losing water as people alter the environment, cut trees, drain wetlands, and use chemicals that destroy the soil. And we’re feeling the heat. On October 21, we hosted Anastassia Makarieva, Jan Pokorny, Andrei Nefiodov, and Jon Schull…

Droughts and flash floods are becoming a new normal in our warming world. What changed? Our landscapes are losing water as people alter the environment, cut trees, drain wetlands, and use chemicals that destroy the soil. And we’re feeling the heat. On Friday, October 21 at 12:15pm ET, join Anastassia Makarieva, Jan Pokorny, Andrei Nefiodov,…

Earth is heating up: “Global surface temperature was 1.09°C higher in 2011– 2020 than 1850–1900,” according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 6th Assessment Report.[3] Yet the mercury is not rising uniformly around the world – the Arctic is warming faster than are the lower latitudes, and temperatures over land are higher than over the…

Cloud cooling effects of afforestation and reforestation at midlatitudes, Cerasoli, Jin & Porporato 2021 Reforestation and afforestation (R&A) are well-established climate mitigation strategies in the wet tropics due to high carbon sequestration rates of forests/trees. However, at high latitudes (boreal regions), the low albedo of trees–compared to snow and other lighter land surfaces–leads to the…

This article (also highlighted in Compendium v2n1) reviews research on the benefits of tree cover in relation to water and energy cycles. Forests help produce rain. Vegetation releases water vapor through transpiration, increasing atmospheric moisture that is then transported by wind. In fact, “over most of the tropics, air that passes over forests for ten…

Signup for our Newsletter:Good news is on its way! Transformationin Mexico Watch what happens! A degraded Mexican landscape is transformed by excellent management. It took only two years (the arrow points to the same tree). Your browser does not support the video tag. Photos: Cuenca Los Ojos Upcoming Events and Announcements Thinking Like Water A five-part…

Water and vegetation are climate heroes, co-starring in a story about as old as terrestrial life on Earth yet under-recognized in mainstream climate politics. Not only does the vegetation embedded in ecosystems act as a giant CO2-absorption machine, constantly removing the greenhouse gas from the air and storing much of it in soil and biomass,…

Evapotranspiration – A Driving Force in Landscape Sustainability, Eiseltová 2012 Vegetation cover cools Earth when it intercepts the sun’s energy. This is not just by providing shade, but also through evapotranspiration, which is how plants regulate their own internal temperatures. For a plant … transpiration[5] is a necessity by which a plant maintains its inner environment…

Highlighting the significance of Makarieva and Gorshkov’s “biotic pump” hypothesis (above), Sheil and Murdiyarso explain it in layman’s terms in this article for the benefit of a broader public, and examine its validity. They point out that the biotic pump hypothesis offers an explanation for a question not otherwise resolved in conventional climate theory. Conventional…

​The authors examine ecological and geophysical principles to explain how land far inland away from the ocean can remain moist, given that gravity continuously pulls surface and groundwater into the ocean over time. All freshwater on land originates in the ocean from which it has evaporated, is carried on air flux, and precipitates over the…

Soils This compendium is, if nothing else, a testament to the key role soils must play if we are to preserve life on earth through the anthropocene. Soils, the engine of every terrestrial ecosystem, are themselves wildly diverse subterranean ecosystems providing habitat to countless trillions of micro- and macro-organisms. These organisms themselves create the soil…

With the rise of civilizations, humans began having significant impacts on bodies of water and the water cycle.  The early “hydraulic civilizations” appeared along major rivers (Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, Yellow River and others), changed watercourses and built canals for agriculture and transportation.  As populations and cities expanded, demand for food led to soil depletion while…

Note: As mentioned in the Release notes, we have a small staff, and therefore have had to postpone some important material for the next release, scheduled for January 2018.  This is particularly true of forests and we will include a more thorough examination of their importance in addressing climate moving forward.  Nonetheless, we felt that the…

Many of our events are recorded. You can find links below. If you can’t find what you are looking for, you might find it on our Announcements page, or try the search box above. Our events can also be found on our Life Saves the Planet series on the GBH Forum Network and our Meetup.…

Advisory Board David Ellison, Ph.D. Dr. David Ellison is a leading climate and forest science researcher whose work focuses on the interactions between forests, water cycles, energy fluxes, and the global climate system. He is a Senior Researcher affiliated with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU – Umeå) and an independent expert on forest-dynamics,…