More than half of the world’s aboveground carbon is stored in tropical forests, and many of these forests are under threat of development. When development happens the degraded forest is thought to have little ecological value. However, a new study published in Science by Christopher Philipson and colleagues comparing naturally regenerating and actively restored logged tropical forests have found forest restoration is a solution capable of both replenishing carbon storage and preserving biodiversity. While this concept isn’t new, the adoption of restoration practices has been impeded by uncertainties over its effectiveness.

The researchers studied an area of tropical forest in Malaysian Borneo, where agricultural activities have caused soaring deforestation rates for years. The study site was heavily logged in the 1980s and subsequently protected from further logging or conversion to plantation agriculture. To assess forest recovery, co-author Greg Asner and his colleagues from the Arizona State University Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, mapped the area using their Global Airborne Observatory, equipped with powerful lasers and spectrometers, in 2016. The resulting maps revealed the location and amount of carbon stored above ground across thousands of hectares of forest.