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Although we know where deforestation occurs, our knowledge of how deforestation unfolds in space and time is limited. We developed frontiermetrics, a tool deriving eight metrics measuring speed, severity and spatiotemporal patterns to characterize deforestation frontiers for ecology and conservation. By offering a standardized workflow, frontiermetrics facilitates frontier monitoring, supports evidence-based conservation planning, and enables robust comparison of deforestation trends and patterns across regions and spatial scales.

As European bison recover and expand across Central Europe, conflicts with agriculture, forestry and traffic may increasingly shape their future. We combined spatial conflict indicators with an individual-based population model to anticipate where such conflicts may emerge and how they could affect population development. The study pinpoints likely hotspots in Poland and western Germany, identifies promising low-conflict restoration areas, and shows that conflict-driven population regulation could strongly limit bison recovery.

We combined tracking data on 3,069 individuals of four ungulate species with satellite time series to perform a continental, multi-decadal assessment of large herbivore responses to forest disturbance. We highlight the importance of strongly increasing disturbances as a key driver of habitat dynamics.

Riparian forests along the Slovak Danube reflect the combined effects of climate stress and human disturbance. Using 40 years of satellite data, we show that hydrological restoration leads to measurable recovery, with forest health improving after initial fluctuations under increasing drought pressure.

Temperate old-growth forests are essential biotic microrefugia, providing high carbon storage, biodiversity, and stable microclimates. Their resilience to drought and disturbance makes them more effective than younger forests. Conserving existing old-growth patches and restoring connectivity through the management of younger stands are critical for biodiversity protection and climate adaptation.

Global forest restoration efforts must monitor native forest loss and plantation-driven tree cover gains on private farmland. Using government land records and high-resolution satellite imagery, we show that 0.17 million hectares of native forest loss in India is masked by 0.44 million hectares of gains on private lands.

Tree plantations dominated by exotic species did not improve biodiversity connectivity in western Rwanda. In contrast, home gardens supported higher woody plant and bird diversity and acted as ecological stepping stones.

Livestock shape much of the environmental and social change sweeping South America’s dry woodlands, yet existing maps show only livestock density, obscuring the diverse production systems shaping these landscapes. Drawing on largely untapped data (livestock vaccination records, farm registers, and transaction permits), we combined active learning with spatial modelling to map eleven livestock systems across 4.2 million km² of the Caatinga, Cerrado, Chaco and Chiquitano. Our maps reveal a sharp spatial segregation of production: capitalised cattle ranching dominates the most productive land in the Cerrado and Humid Chaco, while pastoralists and smallholders are concentrated in the driest and least productive areas. This pattern reflects both the adaptive capacity of pastoralist systems in drylands and their ongoing marginalisation by agribusiness expansion. The resulting geography offers a foundation for context-sensitive conservation and land-use policy in some of the world’s most contested deforestation frontiers.

Millions of hectares of tropical woodland are cleared for agricultural projects that ultimately are not productive. This study examines failed land investments that lead to deforestation, finding that projects are largely stalled by local resistance or poor planning. The research reveals a grim reality: even after an investment fails, illegal deforestation sometimes persists, and local communities are frequently left without access to their land. These findings highlight an urgent need for governments to learn from these failures, prioritize local voices, and reevaluate priorities in land governance.

By reconstructing 40 years of fire history and combining the resulting map with land-use reconstruction and climate data we show that agriculture – and not climate change – is the main driver of changing fire dynamics in the Chaco.