The ecologist revealing the invisible networks that revive rainforests
In a research station in central Panama, you can walk through a century of forest time, watching scrubby plots of adolescent trees give way to cathedral-like canopies of mature growth. Forest ecologist Daisy Dent, a senior scientist at ETH Zurich, oversees this sequence of…
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For example, previous research had shown that fast-growing “pioneer trees,” the first to thrive in the damaged land, are eventually overtaken by larger carbon-storing trees. Dent’s research helped fill in gaps about the mechanics of how this happens—or doesn’t happen—in individual cases. In the Gustavia -dominated patch, for instance, stubborn grasses planted by cattle ranchers smothered most other trees before they could take root. These trees can hang around, crowding out the light, for 150 years, blocking the second wave of large-trunked trees.
Dent found herself well placed for the massive…
