Spencer C. Schubert, PhD
Research Page

As of the end of June, our global reforestation survey has concluded! In total we had a 55% participation rate from the 128 invited organizations. Over the next two months we will be analyzing our data with the aim that our study be published at some point before the end of 2025 or shortly following. In the meantime, we are working with Mongabay and Vizzuality to update the existing Mongabay Reforestation Catalog to produce a new Global Reforestation Directory that summarizes our survey data across all organizations in the study. This will likely be available to the public by the end of September.

I am pleased to share that, together with Islas project team in Costa Rica, we have published our first paper from the 2022 field census efforts in Ecological Applications! This represented the first ever complete survey of naturally colonizing trees in the experimental forests in southern Costa Rica, aged 16-18 years. With over 80,000 stems measured and identified to at least 255 tree species, we found new insights for how initial planting designs from the experiment are affecting community assembly and recruitment of dispersal-limited late-successional species.