Due to clear-cutting, the area of undisturbed rainforests is decreasing. At the edges of deforested areas, temperatures rise, and there is more light. Trees are able to adapt to changes in their living conditions and environment, but how does environmental change affect the shape of trees in the tropical rainforest? To date there has been no overall understanding of this.

Associate Professor Eduardo Maeda from the University of Helsinki coordinated an international project investigating tree shapes on the edges of the tropical rainforest. Matheus Nunes, who previously worked at the University of Helsinki and is now active at the University of Maryland, headed a study where data were collected through terrestrial laser scanning to model Amazonian trees.

The findings were recently published in Nature Communications. The study clearly demonstrated that trees growing on forest edges are shaped differently from those growing deep in the forest.