More than mitigation: The role of forests in climate adaptation
Forests regulate global and local climates in ways that impact human well-being. In this Review, we discuss the scale-dependent mechanisms through which forests regulate climate, highlighting their contributions to global mitigation and local adaptation. Locally, forests tend to buffer temperatures, cooling in warm conditions and warming in cold ones. In regions that naturally support dense forest cover, trees contribute to global cooling primarily through carbon uptake, with some offsetting from albedo-related warming. By enhancing rainfall interception, evapotranspiration, and cloud formation, forests also influence the hydrological cycle, lowering flood risks in humid regions but often reducing downstream water availability, especially in drier climates. Collectively, these interacting processes show that the greatest climate benefits occur where forests are native, highlighting their importance for both climate adaptation and mitigation.
Authors
- Florian Zellweger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-9147)
- Yuting Liang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2052-6785)
- Robert I. McDonald (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7273-6549)
- Luke Parsons (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3147-0593)
- Marius G. Floriancic (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5108-4580)
- Marysa M. Laguë (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8513-542X)
- Nicholas H. Wolff (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1162-3556)
- June T. Spector (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0761-1256)
- J. H. Jones
- Susan C. Cook‐Patton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7194-4397)
- James W. Kirchner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6577-3619)
- Benedict Probst (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1149-8938)
- Josephine Elena Reek (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3567-1814)
- Thales A. P. West (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3896-6516)
- Pieter De Frenne
- Paolo D’Odorico
- Constantin M. Zohner
- Gabriel Reuben Smith
- Robert B. Jackson
- Yuta J. Masuda
- Thomas W. Crowther
Institutions
- Forest Institute (US)
- The Nature Conservancy (US)
- Oregon State University (US)
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- City University of New York (US)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- University of Washington (US)
- Research Institute for Nature and Forest (BE)
- University of Utah (US)
- Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (CH)
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SE)
- Ghent University (BE)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE)
- Centre for Natural Resource Governance (ZW)
- Open Philanthropy Project (US)
- SystemsX.ch (CH)
- Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (DE)
- Institute of Soil Science (CN)
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science
- Published
- 2026-02-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ads4361
- Primary Topic
- Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00