“A future planet with fewer large, old forests will be very different than what we have grown accustomed to,” as “older forests often host much higher biodiversity than young forests and they store more carbon,” he added. But already, “over the last hundred years we’ve lost a lot of old forests, and they’ve been replaced in part by non-forests and in part by young forests. This has consequences on biodiversity, climate mitigation, and forestry.”

“Increasing rates of tree mortality driven by climate and land use change—combined with uncertainty in the mix of species that will form the next generation—pose big challenges for conservationists and forest managers alike,” agreed co-author Tom Pugh, a scientist at the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research.