Native trees thrive in teak plantations and may protect the Panama Canal
Global Change
As global temperatures hit record highs, scientists ask what will happen in tropical countries, already some of the warmest places on Earth. Will forests and reefs reach tipping points — when individual and ecosystem functions are disabled — or will they adapt to changing conditions quickly enough to survive? Will some organisms lose out and others dominate? STRI scientists take a deep-time, global approach to these questions, studying fossilized South American rainforests and drawing data from deep-sea cores and forest monitoring sites around the world.