Trees, Forests and People 1 (2020) 100001

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Trees, Forests and People

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tfp

Editorial

Welcome to Trees, Forests and People!

Fig. 1. The domain of Trees, Forests and People spans from studies of individual trees to whole forests and regions. The topics deal with the full array of interesting
components and processes that are found where trees occur, including wildlife, water, and of course people and policies.

Trees can thrive anywhere on Earth where the winter weather is
not too severe, and the summer supply of water is not too low. The
60,000 species of trees (Botanic Gardens Conservation International,
https://www.bgci.org/resources/bgci-databases/globaltreesearch/) are
adapted for conditions that range from cold boreal mountains to hot
tropical floodplains, from salty coastal marshes to the centers of urban
metropolises (Fig. 1). Most trees are surrounded by dozens of others, of
the same species or a dozen species, but some are surrounded by grassy
savannas or concrete pavement. Trees across the planet are strongly in-
fluenced by people. The most remote trees may be affected by human im-
pacts on animals that browse on leaves or fruits, possibly spreading tree
seeds for the next generation. Other species have been strongly selected
across generations for genotypes that meet human needs, including re-
cent advances in direct genetic modification. As humans shift Earth’s

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tfp.2020.100001

2666-7193/© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Editorial
climate, all trees will be affected. The welfare of humans connects to
forests that provide direct livelihoods, and forests provide products that
are harvested and sold locally and globally. Forests provide habitat for
uncountable numbers of animal species and non-tree vegetation. All of
the major river systems that sustain our civilization begin in forested
uplands, where trees influence the timing, amount, and quality of wa-
ter flowing down toward farms and cities. This is the domain of Trees,
Forests and People.
Trees change over time, and forests change across time and space.
Direct and indirect human activities influence these changes, and future
forests will depend in large part on active decisions people make about
forest lands, as well as unintentional actions (such as spreading inva-
sive species). The local details of each set of tree species and locations
will always be important, so general scientific knowledge about forests
Trees, Forests and People 1 (2020) 100001
always needs local details for effective application. Our general scien-
tific knowledge in turn grows from assembling and understanding de-
tails generated from studies and experiments on local trees and forests.
The articles in Trees, Forests and People span this broad range, from inte-
grative cross-disciplinary studies with widespread insights to important
case studies about specific times and places. Open access ensures that
knowledge will be open to everyone.
Dan Binkley
Editor-in-Chief
Northern Arizona University, United States
E-mail address: Dan.Binkley@alumni.ubc.ca