The vital role forests play in providing habitat for biodiversity, storing carbon and supporting cultures also buttresses global society economically and socially, according to a new report by authors at the International Union of Forest Research Organizations. But in making those vital connections, the authors also bring together data showing how humanity’s cumulative negative impacts on forests threaten both their resilience and our own. Over time, the researchers warn, human impacts on forests are continuing to build toward dangerous tipping points that could lead to collapse and the loss of crucial services including carbon sequestration and the provision of freshwater. “We cannot have a forest that has compromised resilience and expect it to continue to provide the benefits that we’ve come to expect and rely on as humanity,” Craig Allen, a resilience scientist and research professor at the University of Nebraska in the U.S. and a report lead author, said at its launch on June 5. Cleared forest in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Image © Viola Belohrad. The authors also conclude that while the communities that live in or near forests are often the first to feel negative effects from forest collapse, the impacts ripple outward and will be much broader in the future. “It’s not only the forest-dependent communities, but proximate communities and the whole planet” that are vulnerable to ecosystem collapse, said Joice Ferreira, an Amazon Rainforest researcher at Embrapa, the Brazilian government’s agricultural research agency. “We are very much interconnected.” On the plus side, much of humanity benefits, at…This article was originally published on Mongabay