NASA Study Confirms Northward Shift of Boreal Forests, Highlighting Climate Impact
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has confirmed that boreal forests, the world's largest terrestrial biome, are shifting northward. This conclusion comes from a study conducted by Feng et al., which analyzed data from 1985 to 2020 using Landsat imagery. The research, published in Biogeosciences, utilized machine learning to process over 224,000 scenes from Landsats 4, 5, 7, and 8, creating detailed maps of tree cover. The study found that boreal forests have expanded by 0.844 million km², a 12% increase, and shifted northward by 0.29° mean latitude. This movement is concentrated between 64-68°N. The study also highlights the role of young boreal forests as carbon sinks, with the potential to sequester significant amounts of carbon if allowed to mature. 
