Widely used method underestimates forests' ability to prevent major floods, researchers argue

Researchers from the University of British Columbia argue that a widely used method to understand and predict flood risk has led scientists to miscalculate how forests can prevent major flooding. The paper, published in Ambio, synthesizes decades of research to explain why the standard approach used to evaluate how forests impact flooding—comparing individual flood peaks before and after disturbance—fails to capture how floods actually develop.