{"id":286625,"date":"2026-02-08T02:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/286625\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T02:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:38:16","slug":"boreal-forests-are-shifting-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/286625\/","title":{"rendered":"Boreal Forests Are Shifting North"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The boreal forest\u2014the world\u2019s largest terrestrial biome\u2014is warming faster than any other forest type. To understand the changing dynamics of boreal forests,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bg.copernicus.org\/articles\/23\/1089\/2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Feng et al., 2026<\/a>\u00a0analyzed the biome from 1985 to 2020, leveraging the longest and highest-resolution satellite record of calibrated tree cover to date. The study, published in February in\u00a0Biogeosciences\u00a0with four co-authors from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, confirms a northward shift in boreal forest cover over the past four decades. Landsat imagery played a central role in this study: the researchers applied machine learning to process 224,026 scenes collected by Landsats 4, 5, 7, and 8 to create annual, 30-meter resolution maps of tree cover across the entire boreal biome. They downscaled and extended calibrated MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields data to 30-meter resolution, creating a 36-year time series (1984-2020) that provided unprecedented spatial detail for tracking forest changes. <\/p>\n<p>The analysis revealed that boreal forests both grew in size and moved northward. The forests expanded by 0.844 million km\u00b2 (a 12% increase) and shifted northward by 0.29\u00b0 mean latitude, with gains concentrated between 64-68\u00b0N. Their work also showcased the capacity of new growth to act as a carbon sink. Young boreal forests (up to 36 years) hold an estimated 1.1-5.9 petagrams of carbon (Pg C) with potential to sequester an additional 2.3-3.8 Pg C if allowed to mature. Landsat\u2019s long time series of highly calibrated data allows researchers to study how ecosystems shift over decades, a crucial insight into our changing world.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The boreal forest\u2014the world\u2019s largest terrestrial biome\u2014is warming faster than any other forest type. To understand the changing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,137641,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-286625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-landsat","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}