"The study observed that soil fertility on previously deforested land can return in less than a decade. But that doesn’t give people a ‘license to kill,’ an author of the study said. "

"Deforestation is a global and accelerating threat. But new research shows that tropical forests can recover naturally and remarkably quickly on abandoned lands.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that under low-intensity use, soil on previously deforested land can recover its fertility in less than a decade. Characteristics such as the layering of plants and trees in a forest, as well as species diversity, came back in about 25 to 60 years.

“I was totally surprised how quickly it went,” said Lourens Poorter, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and lead author on the paper. “These forests can recover very fast and they can do it by themselves.”

Burgeoning secondary forests are good for the climate as well. They are able to sequester more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than established forests; like the voracious food intake of a sprouting teen compared to that of an older adult."

Tik Root reports for the Washington Post December 10, 2021. [2]