State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

forests2

  • The Truly Serious Side of Roadkill

    The Truly Serious Side of Roadkill

    A new film how India’s fast-expanding road networks is fragmenting the few remaining refuges of many endangered creatures. The results are hard to watch.

  • Seeing the Forest for More Than the Trees: Adding Conservation into Holistic Development

    Seeing the Forest for More Than the Trees: Adding Conservation into Holistic Development

    International development increasingly recognizes that governance, economic growth, health, and human well-being are inextricably linked—multisectoral programming is the order of the day. But conservation too often gets left out of the picture.

  • Photo Essay: The Re-Greening of Puerto Rico

    Photo Essay: The Re-Greening of Puerto Rico

    Researchers survey the damage to Puerto Rico’s forests in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

  • Climate Change and the Re-Greening of Puerto Rico

    Climate Change and the Re-Greening of Puerto Rico

    Ecologist Maria Uriarte investigates the effects of Hurricane Maria on the forests of Puerto Rico, and how long-term climate change may affect them.

  • Palm Oil in the Amazon: Threat or Opportunity?

    Palm Oil in the Amazon: Threat or Opportunity?

    Small migratory farming is responsible for 70% of the annual deforestation in Peru. Can palm oil address this problem and lead the change towards sustainable development in the Peruvian Amazon?

  • Climate May Quickly Drive Forest-Eating Beetles North, Says Study

    Climate May Quickly Drive Forest-Eating Beetles North, Says Study

    Over the next few decades, global warming-related rises in winter temperatures could significantly extend the range of the southern pine beetle, one of the world’s most aggressive tree-killing insects, through much of the northern United States and southern Canada, says a new study.

  • Photo Essay: High in the Hills, Climate May Challenge Forests

    Photo Essay: High in the Hills, Climate May Challenge Forests

    Forests in the south-central United States are some of the country’s most productive and diverse. They also sit in a warming “hole”—an area where the progressive rise in temperature affecting most of the continent hasn’t yet taken hold. A team from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is studying how these forests might shift—or even disappear—when…

  • How Will Shifting Climate Change U.S. Forests?

    How Will Shifting Climate Change U.S. Forests?

    One foggy spring morning just after a hard rain, Park Williams was tromping through the woods deep in Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains. Toiling down a steep slope, he supposedly was keeping a simultaneous eye out for rattlesnakes, copperheads, poison ivy and big old trees. Williams seemed mostly focused on the trees, though; attention to the other…

  • Seeing the Amazon’s Future Through the Fog

    Seeing the Amazon’s Future Through the Fog

    Scientists have developed a new approach to modeling the water and carbon cycles in the Amazon that could lead to better climate forecasts and improved water resource management.

  • The Truly Serious Side of Roadkill

    The Truly Serious Side of Roadkill

    A new film how India’s fast-expanding road networks is fragmenting the few remaining refuges of many endangered creatures. The results are hard to watch.

  • Seeing the Forest for More Than the Trees: Adding Conservation into Holistic Development

    Seeing the Forest for More Than the Trees: Adding Conservation into Holistic Development

    International development increasingly recognizes that governance, economic growth, health, and human well-being are inextricably linked—multisectoral programming is the order of the day. But conservation too often gets left out of the picture.

  • Photo Essay: The Re-Greening of Puerto Rico

    Photo Essay: The Re-Greening of Puerto Rico

    Researchers survey the damage to Puerto Rico’s forests in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

  • Climate Change and the Re-Greening of Puerto Rico

    Climate Change and the Re-Greening of Puerto Rico

    Ecologist Maria Uriarte investigates the effects of Hurricane Maria on the forests of Puerto Rico, and how long-term climate change may affect them.

  • Palm Oil in the Amazon: Threat or Opportunity?

    Palm Oil in the Amazon: Threat or Opportunity?

    Small migratory farming is responsible for 70% of the annual deforestation in Peru. Can palm oil address this problem and lead the change towards sustainable development in the Peruvian Amazon?

  • Climate May Quickly Drive Forest-Eating Beetles North, Says Study

    Climate May Quickly Drive Forest-Eating Beetles North, Says Study

    Over the next few decades, global warming-related rises in winter temperatures could significantly extend the range of the southern pine beetle, one of the world’s most aggressive tree-killing insects, through much of the northern United States and southern Canada, says a new study.

  • Photo Essay: High in the Hills, Climate May Challenge Forests

    Photo Essay: High in the Hills, Climate May Challenge Forests

    Forests in the south-central United States are some of the country’s most productive and diverse. They also sit in a warming “hole”—an area where the progressive rise in temperature affecting most of the continent hasn’t yet taken hold. A team from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is studying how these forests might shift—or even disappear—when…

  • How Will Shifting Climate Change U.S. Forests?

    How Will Shifting Climate Change U.S. Forests?

    One foggy spring morning just after a hard rain, Park Williams was tromping through the woods deep in Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains. Toiling down a steep slope, he supposedly was keeping a simultaneous eye out for rattlesnakes, copperheads, poison ivy and big old trees. Williams seemed mostly focused on the trees, though; attention to the other…

  • Seeing the Amazon’s Future Through the Fog

    Seeing the Amazon’s Future Through the Fog

    Scientists have developed a new approach to modeling the water and carbon cycles in the Amazon that could lead to better climate forecasts and improved water resource management.