Natural forest regeneration is projected to reduce local temperatures

Abstract

Forest regeneration is a crucial strategy for mitigating and adapting to global warming. Yet its precise impact on local climate remains uncertain, a factor that complicates decision-making when it comes to prioritizing investments. Here, we developed global maps illustrating how natural forest regeneration influences key local climate drivers—land surface temperature (LST), albedo, and evapotranspiration—using models fitted at a 1-km spatial resolution with a random forest classifier. We found that natural forest regeneration can alter annual mean LST by 0.01 °C, −0.59 °C, −0.50 °C, and −2.03 °C in Boreal, Mediterranean, Temperate, and Tropical regions, respectively. These variations underscore the region-specific effects of forest regeneration. Importantly, natural forest regeneration reduces LST across 64% of 1 billion hectares and 75% of 148 million hectares of potentially restorable land under different scenarios. These findings improve understanding of how forest regeneration can help regulate local climate, supporting climate adaptation efforts.