New Study Reveals Over 80% of Community-led Restoration Sites on Restor Have Earth Cooling Potential

London, United Kingdom – A new study by researchers at Clark University, alongside scientists from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and ETH Zurich, published today in the journal Nature Communications, provides a global analysis of where restoring tree cover is most effective at cooling the global climate system.

In recent decades, there has been a growing recognition of the need to protect and restore nature. But until recently, scientists have lacked a global understanding of where the world’s restoration projects exist, so studying the global movement or understanding its impacts has been impossible. For the first time ever, scientists have been able to use the advanced spatial technology provided by Restor to explore the potential global climate impacts of restoration efforts across the globe.

Figure: The map shows Restor sites used in this study along with the legend for the magnitude of climate cooling and warming across the world, considering both changes in carbon and albedo.

The study, Accounting for Albedo Change to Identify Climate Positive Tree Cover Restoration, highlights how restoring tree cover can, in some locations, trigger global warming rather than global cooling. To see whether restoration actions were occurring in climate-negative zones, the scientists looked at where Restor’s sites occur and found instead that over 80% of the restoration sites are in climate-positive places, where restoring tree cover can have a net cooling effect on the planet. Restor makes it possible, for the first time, to get a comprehensive view of restoration sites worldwide with precise data on site locations.

The albedo research provides a series of maps that help nature practitioners and land managers determine the most climate-positive places for restoring tree cover to help guide grand ambitions for scaling up restoration. The study found that within every biome, there are places where restoration of tree cover can provide climate mitigation benefits.

“The balance of carbon storage versus albedo change that comes from restoring tree cover varies from place to place, but until now we didn’t have the tools to tell the good climate solutions from the bad. Our study aims to change that, providing the maps needed to empower smarter decisions while also ensuring that limited finance is directed at those locations where restoring tree cover can make the most positive difference as a natural climate solution.” Lead author Natalia Hasler, a research scientist at the George Perkins Marsh Institute – Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Although most of the thousands of on-the-ground projects are concentrated in these zones of climate-positive opportunity, the study also found that changes in albedo did diminish the climate benefit - by 20% or more in the majority of the project areas. Thus, incorporating albedo into the climate ledger is important for almost all projects that are seeking to tackle climate change.

“We’ve addressed a significant research gap and gained a much more complete picture of how restoring tree cover can impact our global climate – both positively and also sometimes negatively. However, it’s important to remember that there are many other sound reasons to restore tree cover, even in locations where the climate benefits aren’t stellar: clean water, resilient food production, wildlife habitat, the list goes on... We’re simply calling on governments and land managers to more carefully integrate albedo in their environmental decision-making and are open-sourcing this robust new set of maps to help them do so.” Senior co-author Susan Cook-Patton – Senior Forest Restoration Scientist at The Nature Conservancy.

“This is a big moment in restoration ecology, because we can now study the impacts of global nature restoration. With the help of the Restor platform, we can now pinpoint the locations of community-led conservation and restoration sites worldwide, and it's amazing to find that most of them can have a cooling impact on the climate." Co-author Dr. Thomas Crowther – Founder of Restor.

Media contact: media@restor.eco

Notes for Editors

Authors: Hasler N., Williams C.A., Carrasco Denney V., Ellis P.W., Shrestha S., Terasaki Hart D.E., Wolff N.H., Yeo S., Crowther T.W., Werden L.K., Cook-Patton S.C. Accounting for albedo change to identify climate positive tree cover restoration. Nature Communications.

Link to study to go live on Tuesday 26 March 2024: https://www.nature.com/articles/10.1038/s41467-024-46577-1

About The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy is a global conservation organization dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. Guided by science, we create innovative, on-the-ground solutions to our world’s toughest challenges so that nature and people can thrive together. We are tackling climate change, conserving lands, waters and oceans at an unprecedented scale, providing food and water sustainably and helping make cities more sustainable. Working in more than 70 countries and territories, we use a collaborative approach that engages local communities, governments, the private sector, and other partners. To learn more, visit nature.org or follow @nature_press on Twitter.

About Crowther Lab, ETH Zurich

Crowther Lab studies global ecosystems, generating knowledge to protect biodiversity and address climate change. The lab features an interdisciplinary team of scientists studying ecosystems at a global scale to understand the relationships between biodiversity and climate change. Its work is helping create the scientific foundation for ecosystem restoration, informing and empowering people to protect and restore Earth’s biodiversity to fight climate change and improve human well-being.

About Clark University

Founded in 1887, Clark University is a liberal arts-based research university that prepares its students to meet tomorrow's most daunting challenges and embrace its greatest opportunities. Through more than 45 undergraduate majors and major tracks, more than 30 advanced degree programs, a growing number of professional certificate programs and nationally recognised community partnerships, Clark fuses rigorous scholarship with authentic world and workplace experiences that empower our students to pursue lives and careers of meaning and consequence.

About Restor

Restor is an open-data, geospatial platform that offers nature stewards access to the latest ecological science for impact storytelling. Described as a Google Maps for nature, with over 200,000 sites, Restor is the largest network of community-led nature sites across the globe and was a 2021 Earthshot Prize Finalist.

Founded by Professor Dr. Thomas Crowther, Restor enables communities doing restoration work to connect to data, knowledge and markets to grow. At the same time, governments, companies, impact funders and financial institutions can support diverse portfolios of projects to be funded and monitor their impact.