“Today, Italy is, in all respects, a forestry nation. The wooded areas have in fact exceeded 100 thousand square kilometers of extension and occupy over a third of the national territory. A figure that marks a significant change, for which from 2020 the forest area has exceeded the agricultural one used: a situation that had not been recorded since the Middle Ages. To photograph this transformation is the report Foreste in Comune, the first socio-economic survey on the forest heritage of the Italian municipalities promoted by PEFC Italia. The analysis shows that the forest has become a central component of the Italian landscape, with a whole series of benefits that derive from the increasingly widespread presence of forest ecosystems.”

From L’Indipendente.

“Brazil’s Atlantic forest, the country’s most threatened biome, last year recorded its lowest level of deforestation since monitoring began 40 years ago, a new report shows.

The forest is Brazil’s most populous biome, and home to 80% of the population and major cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In 2025 it recorded 8,658 hectares of deforestation, marking the first time it has fallen below 10,000 hectares since 1985.”

From The Guardian.

“While satellite data have shown an increase in forest cover, it’s been more challenging to assess whether the recovered forests have life thriving within them. More often than not, forest cover regeneration is considered the key metric of success in PES programs. Biodiversity assessments, however, are more difficult and expensive to implement over large areas…

Enter bioacoustics. For years, scientists have used this noninvasive technology — essentially placing microphones throughout the forest to record animal sounds — to conduct large-scale biodiversity assessments over wide swaths of forests. It’s also used to understand the behavior and communication patterns of animals…

Delgado and his team captured close to 16,658 hours of audio data from 119 sites across the Nicoya Peninsula in northwestern Costa Rica. They placed their audio recorders in protected areas, forests recovering under the PES program, monoculture plantations, and pastures, and retrieved them a week later. The sites that were sampled include 50 forests that were allowed to regrow naturally without any human intervention. These forests have been recovering after being abandoned for cattle ranching and farming for anywhere between 25 and 42 years.

After analyzing the data, they found that the sound profile of naturally regenerated forests under the PES program was very similar to that of protected forests. These patches were found to be ‘1.4 times more acoustically similar’ to protected forests than they were to pastures. ‘Healthy forests have strong peaks of acoustic activity right when the sun is coming up and going down,’ Delgado said. ‘Whereas in pastures, these are much less pronounced and the biggest peak is in the middle of the day when humans are active there.’

Biodiversity in monoculture timber plantations was also found to be recovering, but not as strongly as in naturally regenerated forests.”

From Mongabay.

“The intensity and frequency of severe droughts in the Amazon region have increased in the recent decades. These extreme events are associated with changes in forest dynamics, biomass and floristic composition. However, most studies of drought response have focused on upland forests with deep water tables, which may be especially sensitive to drought. Palms, which tend to dominate the less well-drained soils, have also been neglected…

Our results indicate that forests growing over shallow water tables—relatively under-studied vegetation that nonetheless occupies one-third of Amazon forests—are remarkably resistant to drought. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that local hydrology and its interactions with climate strongly constrain forest drought effects, and has implications for climate change feedbacks.”

From British Ecological Society.