Trees are dying in Australia’s rainforest

Australia’s Northeastern tropical rainforests are one of the oldest in the world. But over there, the rate of trees dying each year has accelerated since the 1980s, and researchers say climate change is probably to blame. The findings, published last May 2022 in Nature come from an extraordinary record of tree deaths catalogued at 24 sites in the tropical forests of northern Queensland over the past 49 years. The team recorded 2.305 deaths among dozens of species and found that the trees’ death rate increased from an average of 1% a year to 2% a year. The researchers looked at other climate-related trends — including rising temperatures and an estimate of drought stress in soils — but they found that the drying atmosphere had the strongest effect. Click below to read more.