More than half of the tree cover in Pacific atolls is largely composed of “abandoned and overgrown” colonial-era coconut palm plantations, reveal satellite images in a study published in December 2024. What the study says: While coconut palm is an integral part of the cultures and economy of Pacific Island communities, colonial powers have driven a rapid spread of coconut plantations on Pacific atolls over the last 200 years, primarily to supply the global coconut oil market. Yet, the extent of these coconut plantations hasn’t been fully mapped, said researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), U.S., and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). To fill this gap, the researchers analyzed 460 satellite images with the help of machine learning, producing very high-resolution vegetation maps of 235 out of the 266 Pacific atolls. The maps showed that coconut palms covered 58.3% of the islands’ tree cover, surpassing native broadleaf trees in terms of canopy area. The study found that 51.2% of the coconut canopies occur in monocultures. “Even on atolls where planting and harvesting ceased decades ago, former coconut plantations persist and exclude competing vegetation,” the authors wrote. The researchers also compared atolls with climates equally suitable for coconut palm and found that atolls that historically exported coconut products had on average 32.1% more coconut canopy coverage. The researchers wrote that this shows the “significant and persistent effects of plantations on forest compositions in the tropical Pacific.” In general, the study found that coconut palms occurred more in large, wet…This article was originally published on Mongabay