A new study in Naturefinds that up to 215 million hectares of land (an area larger than Mexico) in humid tropical regions around the world has the potential to naturally regrow. That much forest could store 23.4 gigatons of carbon over 30 years and also significantly help enhance biodiversity and water quality. The study showed that more than half of the area with strong potential for regrowth was in five countries: Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, China, and Colombia. 

“Tree planting in degraded landscapes can be costly. By leveraging natural regeneration techniques, nations can meet their restoration goals cost effectively,” says the study’s co-lead author, Brooke Williams, a researcher at  the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and the Institute for Capacity Exchange in Environmental Decisions. “Our model can guide where these savings can best be taken advantage of,” she says. 

A culmination of decades of work

Matthew Fagan, associate professor of geography and environmental systems at UMBC and second author on the new study, developed a data set the authors relied on.

In that work, “We used satellite images to identify millions of small areas where tree cover increased over time. We then excluded the areas planted by humans with machine learning, focusing on natural regrowth,” Fagan says. The study tracked regrowth between 2000 and 2012, and then checked if the regrowth was maintained through 2015. “Those natural patches were the input data for this novel study,” he says, “the first to predict where future forest regrowth will occur, given observed past regrowth.” 

The study, co-led by Hawthorne Beyer, head of geospatial science at Mombak, a Brazilian startup which aims to generate high-quality carbon credits through reforestation of the Amazon, and director of science at Institute for Capacity Exchange in Environmental Decisions, also pulled in global data sets describing factors like soil quality, slope, road and population density, local wealth, distance from urban centers and from healthy forest, and more. “Any time you build one of these global studies, you’re standing on the backs of so many other scientists,” Fagan says. “Each one of these studies represents years of work.”

The study found that the factors most strongly associated with high regrowth potential were a patch’s proximity to existing forest, the density of nearby forest, and the content of carbon in the soil. Those factors in particular “seem to do a really good job explaining the patterns of regrowth we see across the world,” Fagan says. Being close to existing forest, for example, is key to supplying a variety of seeds to the area to support diverse regrowth, Fagan explains. 

Keeping it local—by supplying a global map

The end product of the study is a digital map of the global tropics, where each pixel—representing 30 x 30 square meters of land—indicates the estimated potential for regrowth. That map, made possible by n extensive international collaboration of researchers, is a boon to environmentalists worldwide hoping to advocate locally for their efforts.

“Our goal and our hope is that this is used democratically by local people, organizations, and localities from the county level all the way up to the national level, to advocate for where restoration should happen,” Fagan says. “The people who live there should be in charge of what happens there—where and how to restore really depends on local conditions.”

Fagan points out that some of the potential regrowth areas the study identified are unlikely to be restored for a variety of reasons, such as being in active use for ranching or crops or located on prime real estate near roads and urban centers. However, a meaningful portion of the 215 million hectares is abandoned and degraded cattle pastures or previously logged forests, where encouraging natural regeneration would have minimal cost to local economies and a long list of benefits.

“If you restored that to rainforest, the benefit to water quality, water provision, local biodiversity, and to soil quality would be immense,” Fagan says. “It would also be an immense benefit for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, so really it’s just a question of, ‘Where can we do this most efficiently?’ That’s what this paper is all about.”

RAND is currently recruiting for our 2025 Summer Associate research internship for doctoral students. Please share the information below with current graduate students enrolled in doctoral or professional degree programs who may be interested in a paid summer internship that provides experience with policy research at a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution. We welcome all applicants, including those who identify as part of historically marginalized groups.

RAND Summer Associate Paid Internship- https://www.rand.org/jobs/summer-associates.html

RAND provides a unique opportunity for graduate students to apply their research skills to important, policy-relevant research projects. Available positions encompass a wide variety of policy-relevant substantive areas (e.g., education, health, justice policy, social and economic policy, labor, national security, cyber policy, data science, etc.) and methodological skills (e.g., quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, machine learning, etc.).

Summer Associates are mentored by an experienced researcher, typically work in an interdisciplinary team, and engage in a wide range of activities to learn what it is like to work at RAND. The program is typically 12 weeks of full-time research; students receive a bi-weekly paycheck.
 
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Chemical Biochemical and Environmental Engineering (CBEE)

Fall 2025 PhD Funding Opportunities

Jorge Almodovar, Ph.D.
Engineering polymeric biomaterials for cell manufacturing, tissue repair, and drug delivery
Website: https://cbee.umbc.edu/faculty/jorge-almodovar/

Özgür Çapraz, Ph.D.
Performance of materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion systems
Website: https://cbee.umbc.edu/faculty/ozgur-capraz/

Corine Jackman Burden, Ph.D.
Bioinformatics, synthetic biology, microfluidics, vaginal microbiome, infectious disease
Website: https://cbee.umbc.edu/faculty/corine-jackman-burden/

Christopher Hennigan, Ph.D.
Aerosol science, health effects, climate change, atmospheric chemistry
Website: https://cbee.umbc.edu/faculty/christopher-hennigan/

Claire Welty, Ph.D. 
Coupled groundwater/surface water modeling of urban systems. 
Website: https://urbanhydrology.umbc.edu/

Upal Ghosh, Ph.D.
Pollutant fate and bioavailability in soils, sediments, and aquatic environments
Website: https://cbee.umbc.edu/faculty/upal-ghosh/

Lee Blaney, Ph.D.
Occurrence, fate/treatment, and transport of contaminants of emerging concern
Website: https://cbee.umbc.edu/faculty/lee-blaney/

Tyler Josephson, Ph.D.
Develop AI and LLM tools and use molecular simulations to understand chemistry in the environment
Website: https://cbee.umbc.edu/faculty/tyler-josephson/

Application details:

Deadline for Ph.D. programs: January 7
Application fee waivers: available by emailing cbeegrad@umbc.edu
Contacting an potential advisor: Students interested in applying are welcome to reach out directly to the faculty members whose research aligns with your specific research interests. Applicants are not required to secure an advisor prior to applying to the program for Fall admission. Applicants should identify which faculty they would like to work with in your 'Statement of academic goals and research interests'

More details on Application process: https://cbee.umbc.edu/academics/graduate-application/

PhD Stipend

$39K+
($39,900/year for 2025–2026; plus tuition remission and health insurance for full-time PhD students)

Learn more about CBEE's graduate progams:  https://cbee.umbc.edu/grad

(Previous announcement listed the incorrect time in the Tagline!)

The Presentation will start at 10:00 this morning!

Date: October 30th 

Time: 10:00 - 11:00

Where: ITE 238

Dr Ferraro, Associate Professor of Computer Science and PhD graduate from Johns Hopkins University, will be discussing strategies, considerations, and tips for preparing for computing, technology, and engineering graduate programs. 

Faculty members from other departments will be on hand to answer questions. We will also highlight the graduate programs available right here at UMBC!

This presentation will be especially helpful for juniors and seniors, but all students are welcome to attend. 

Refreshments will be served!

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Office of Research (OR) is currently recruiting for Research Assistants.  The posting is open now through November 12, 2024 and can be found here:

 https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/careers/current-openings/research-assistant/

We are holding two Microsoft Teams information sessions, one on Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. EDT:

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