A petition calling for more regulation of data centers in Finland has gathered more than 96,400 signatures—nearly twice the amount needed to force the Finnish Parliament to formally take up the petition for a debate—after Google infuriated residents and officials of two towns where the tech giant illegally chopped down an estimated 250,000 trees across 815 acres of forest after purchasing the land area. The company felled the trees and stripped the entire area of its top soil without conducting a legally required environmental impact assessment, prompting the Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) to order Google to suspend all “measures that significantly change the environment.” The company was given a deadline of October 23 to halt the work in the rural towns of Muhos and Otanmäki, and LVV said it would consider enforcement proceedings and fines if Google does not comply. Google’s Finland country manager, Antti Järvinen, said last week that the company had acted “on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time” as it cleared the land for its €13 billion ($14.5 billion) artificial intelligence infrastructure projects…
New York City, Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2026: ‘Nature’s Magicians’ Review: A Leaf Less Ordinary
“Quietly and unobtrusively,” Jonathan Silvertown writes in “Nature’s Magicians,” leaves “conjure up our world.” We may not stop often to appreciate the hidden alchemy of leaves, but in this engaging and revelatory book, Mr. Silvertown gives center stage to the extraordinary, essential leaf, demystifying its evolution, inner workings and irreplaceable role in life on earth. One reason we take leaves for granted may be their incredible abundance. Most land plants sprout leaves, which include evergreen needles and blades of grass. Mr. Silvertown calculates that at their seasonal high point there are a thousand times more leaves in one type of British grassland than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. He archly suggests that we adopt “botanical” instead of “astronomical” to describe mind-bogglingly large numbers. Without the ubiquitous leaf, life as we know it would not exist. In their leaves, plants create much of the oxygen we breathe and, directly or indirectly, nearly all the food we eat. By removing carbon from the air and locking it away in plant tissues, leaves help cool the planet. And when their work is done, leaves fall to the ground and decompose, creating fertile soil…
Nature, October 21, 2026: Global forest typology at 10-meter resolution for forest and land-use monitoring
Distinguishing forest types—primary, naturally regenerating, planted, and plantation forests—from agricultural tree crops and other land uses is essential for carbon accounting, biodiversity assessment, conservation planning, and supply-chain regulation. However, no existing global dataset resolves this typology at high spatial resolution. We present the Forest Typology (ForTy) v1 dataset, a global 10-meter resolution baseline map for 2020 that classifies all land into six categories aligned with FAO and EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) definitions: Primary Forest, Naturally Regenerating Forest, Planted Forest, Plantation Forest, Tree Crops and Agroforestry, and Other Land. A cascaded deep learning pipeline, trained on 1.7 million globally distributed samples, generates per-class relative confidence maps from geospatial satellite embeddings by combining weakly supervised learning with active learning. Independent validation against 8,190 expert-labeled stratified random sites yields an overall accuracy of 90.2% for the six-class scheme, 94.8% for natural forest classification, and 95.5% for forest/non-forest classification…
World Atlas, October 22, 2026:The Last Wild Hemlock Forests Left Standing
An invasive insect no bigger than a pinhead has killed large numbers of eastern hemlocks across the Appalachian Mountains, changing forests that took centuries to develop. Yet remarkable old-growth hemlock stands remain in protected valleys, steep ravines, and remote stretches of public land. Their survival matters beyond the trees themselves. Hemlock canopies shade streams, shelter wildlife, and maintain cool, damp conditions that many forest species depend on. These forests are among the surviving examples of old-growth eastern hemlock communities in the United States, although they are not the only hemlock stands remaining. Some grow within national forests managed by the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, while others are protected in state parks and natural areas. Their condition varies, particularly where the hemlock woolly adelgid has caused extensive damage. Together, these seven locations illustrate the ecological importance of eastern hemlock forests and the challenges involved in preserving them…
Efforts are underway to save a historic 400-year-old tree in Tumwater after an early-season storm caused branches to fall off. According to the city of Tumwater, the “Davis Meeker Garry Oak Tree” is significant to the Coastal Salish Indian people and sits on the northern branch of the Oregon Trail. The towering oak, located just off Old Highway 99 near the Olympia regional airport, is listed on the city of Tumwater’s register of historic places. “We are estimating it’s 400 years old,” said Rhonda Larson Kramer, president of Save the Davis Meeker Garry Oak Tree. Kramer said the tree predates the city itself and served as a marker along a historic route. “It goes way back before Tumwater was even a city, before anybody had even any settlers had even come. That tree was important to the Native Americans as well… It was a trail marker on a historic Native American trade route, and that is called the Cowlitz Trail … That later became the Oregon Trail,” Kramer said…
A proposal aimed at increasing public input on thousands of planned roadside tree removals is raising questions about how far Kalamazoo County should go in holding its road commission accountable. County commissioners discussed a draft resolution Tuesday that would ask the Road Commission of Kalamazoo County to adopt new public engagement measures for its federally funded Safe Streets and Roads for All project. The $25 million project initially included an estimate of about 8,000 trees for removal. Following additional design review and public input, the road commission revised that estimate to about 4,000 trees. The project is intended to improve roadside safety and reduce the risk of crashes involving fixed objects…
The first reaction is often the same: Is my tree rotting? Sometimes the answer is no. Mushrooms in the grass can simply be the visible part of fungi breaking down buried wood, old roots, leaves, or other organic matter. But mushrooms growing directly from a living tree, its root flare, or exposed roots deserve a closer look. That distinction matters more than the fact that mushrooms are there at all. Fall is prime mushroom weather. Cooler temperatures and wet soil can bring fungal fruiting bodies to the surface after the fungus itself has been living quietly underground for months or even years. If mushrooms are scattered through the lawn beneath a tree, they may have little to do with the health of the tree itself. University of Maryland Extension explains that many lawn fungi simply feed on decaying organic material. Old roots from a tree removed years ago, buried wood, mulch, thatch, and other plant debris can all produce mushrooms even when there is no sick tree nearby. Some fungi are actually part of a healthy soil ecosystem. Others form mutually beneficial relationships with living tree roots…
BBC, October 20, 2026: Teen advised not to fell tree that killed him, inquest told
An apprentice tree surgeon had been advised not to fell the tree that killed him, an inquest has been told. Jonty Parkinson was working in woodland on a National Trust site near Faringdon, in Oxfordshire on 6 September 2024 when he was crushed by a tree that did not fall in the intended way. Paying tribute to the 18-year-old at an inquest in Oxford on Tuesday, his mother Ali Cockayne said her son had a “real zest for life”. His manager George Green said he had instructed Parkinson and his colleague Joe Bristow to dismantle the 12m (39ft) tall tree in sections. Green, who was an arboriculture team manager at the Cotswold Group, said he was “gobsmacked” when he arrived at the site to see it had been cut down. He also disputed claims made by Bristow during Monday’s proceedings that he had told the pair to take the tree down in one fell with the help of a chipper…
Black walnut trees are widely known for their valuable timber, but researchers at the University of Missouri are working to put the spotlight on another opportunity: the nuts. In doing so, the diversification could help generate more economic opportunity for farmers, ranchers and landowners, especially in areas where it’s difficult to grow crops. At the university’s Horticulture and Agroforestry Research Farm, about 30 miles from the Columbia campus, a collection of black walnut trees is helping researchers identify traits that could make nut production a more attractive option for farmers and landowners. Some of the trees in the orchard are now 30 years old, planted in 1996 as part of the university’s first black walnut repository. “These are like chance seedling collections that occurred usually in on-farm environments that were collected over the 20th century by grower association members for the reason of high kernel percentage and high kernel mass,” says Ronald Revord, an associate professor in the University of Missouri’s School of Natural Resources and director of the Center for Agroforestry…
Tree rings can preserve clues about the weather and growing conditions a tree experienced during its life. In western Montana, researchers study those patterns to learn about drought, fire and forest health. Sharon Hood, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station Fire Sciences Lab, says tree growth responds to climate. By comparing rings from multiple trees, researchers can identify years that were especially dry or wet. “We can start to see bad climate years when things were really dry during the summer, not much rainfall, or really wet years,” Hood said. During severe drought, conditions can be harsh enough that a tree survives without growing new wood, leaving no ring for that year. Rings can also reveal how trees respond to stress. In pine trees, researchers can study defenses against bark beetles and how those defenses relate to weather…
Lawyers for the Trump administration faced off in a contentious hearing Monday with a federal judge pushing for answers over whether she was deliberately misled by the government over why it removed hundreds of trees from a Washington, D.C., public golf course. D.C. District Judge Ana Reyes had ordered testimony from Interior Department official Gregory Wischer and acting Director of the National Park Service Jessica Bowron over why the government moved abruptly on Columbus Day weekend to remove more than 500 trees from East Potomac golf course without giving her proper advance notice. Last week, Reyes erupted at attorneys for the government after the trees were removed despite her demanding the administration alert her in advance if it planned any significant alterations to the course given ongoing litigation. The golf course has been the subject of litigation brought by the D.C. Preservation League in response to President Donald Trump’s efforts to turn it into a course that could host professional tournaments…
