Upworthy's book GOOD PEOPLE, now available - take a look!

Shop
 Explore 

forests

Sustainability

Researchers dumped coffee waste into a forest and couldn't believe what it looked like 2 years later

We used to throw away 10 million tons of coffee pulp every year. These researchers may have found a better use for it.

British Ecological Society

Spreading coffee pulp over barren land lead to rapid forest growth.

Coffee, believe it or not, seems to be an ever-expanding market. The hot or cold, caf or decaf beverage gets more and more popular every year. That's in part due to the fact that people are drinking coffee younger and younger. Surely, you've seen the 10-year-olds ordering oatmilk shaken espressos out in the wild, and the high-schoolers starting each day with a hot cup of joe.

It's great news for Starbucks and Folgers, but maybe not such great news for the environment. Because one of the biggest problems with coffee production is that it generates an incredible amount of waste. Once coffee beans are separated from cherries, about 45% of the entire biomass is discarded. So for every pound of roasted coffee we enjoy, an equivalent amount of coffee pulp is discarded into massive landfills across the globe.

That means that approximately 10 million tons of coffee pulp is discarded into the environment every year. When disposed of improperly, the waste can cause serious damage soil and water sources.

However, a new study published in the British Ecological Society journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence has found that coffee pulp isn't just a nuisance to be discarded.

It can have an incredibly positive impact on regrowing deforested areas of the planet, of which there are also increasingly many.

coffee, environment, environmentalism, global warming, climate change, innovation, science, planet, earth A layer of coffee pulp three feet thick was applied. via British Ecological Society

In 2018, researchers from ETH-Zurich and the University of Hawaii spread 30 dump trucks worth of coffee pulp over a roughly 100' x 130' area of degraded land in Costa Rica. Remember, coffee pulp is made from the discarded bits of coffee cherries, not from used grounds. The experiment took place on a former coffee farm that underwent rapid deforestation in the 1950s.

The coffee pulp was spread three-feet thick over the entire area.

Another plot of land near the coffee pulp dump was left alone to act as a control for the experiment.

"The results were dramatic." Dr. Rebecca Cole, lead author of the study, said. "The area treated with a thick layer of coffee pulp turned into a small forest in only two years while the control plot remained dominated by non-native pasture grasses."

In just two years, the area treated with coffee pulp had an 80% canopy cover, compared to just 20% of the control area. So, the coffee-pulp-treated area grew four times more rapidly. Like a jolt of caffeine, it reinvigorated biological activity in the area.

The canopy was also four times taller than that of the control.

coffee, environment, environmentalism, global warming, climate change, innovation, science, planet, earth The forest experienced a radical, positive change via British Ecological Society

The coffee-treated area also eliminated an invasive species of grass that took over the land and prevented forest succession. Its elimination allowed for other native species to take over and recolonize the area.

The coffee pulp did two things. First, it suppressed invasive grasses so that native growth could flourish. And second, it greatly elevated the nutrients in the soil, boosting phosphorous, carbon, and nitrogen levels – all key elements for rapid new growth.

"This case study suggests that agricultural by-products can be used to speed up forest recovery on degraded tropical lands. In situations where processing these by-products incurs a cost to agricultural industries, using them for restoration to meet global reforestation objectives can represent a 'win-win' scenario," Dr. Cole said.

If the results are repeatable it's a win-win for coffee drinkers and the environment.

coffee, environment, environmentalism, global warming, climate change, innovation, science, planet, earth We can't outpace deforestation, but innovations like this can help dramatically. Photo by Miha Rekar on Unsplash

Researchers believe that coffee treatments can be a cost-effective way to reforest degraded land. They may also work to reverse the effects of climate change by supporting the growth of forests across the globe. With a staggering 10 million hectares of land deforested globally every year (a hectare is an area of 10,000 square meters, just imagine 10 million of those) it's an urgent issue that could decide the fate of our entire planet.

The 2016 Paris Agreement made reforestation an important part of the fight against climate change. The agreement incentivizes developing countries to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, promote forest conservation and sustainable management, and enhance forest carbon stocks in developing countries.

coffee, environment, environmentalism, global warming, climate change, innovation, science, planet, earth With coffee consumption on the rise, the findings are more important than ever. Photo by Mike Kenneally on Unsplash

"We hope our study is a jumping off point for other researchers and industries to take a look at how they might make their production more efficient by creating links to the global restoration movement," Dr. Cole said.

This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.

From Your Site Articles

climate change

Science

A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. Here's what it looks like now.

12,000 tons of food waste and 21 years later, this forest looks totally different.

In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica with an off-the-wall idea. In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country's northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot. The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.

The first deposit of orange peels in 1996.

Photo by Dan Janzen.

"It's a huge sign, bright yellow lettering. We should have been able to see it," Treuer says. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.

When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place, Treuer was floored. Compared to the adjacent barren former pastureland, the site of the food waste deposit was "like night and day."

The site of the orange peel deposit (L) and adjacent pastureland (R).

Photo by Leland Werden.

"It was just hard to believe that the only difference between the two areas was a bunch of orange peels. They look like completely different ecosystems," he explains.

The area was so thick with vegetation he still could not find the sign.

Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.

The results, published in the journal "Restoration Ecology," highlight just how completely the discarded fruit parts assisted the area's turnaround.

The ecologists measured various qualities of the site against an area of former pastureland immediately across the access road used to dump the orange peels two decades prior. Compared to the adjacent plot, which was dominated by a single species of tree, the site of the orange peel deposit featured two dozen species of vegetation, most thriving.

Lab technician Erik Schilling explores the newly overgrown orange peel plot.

Photo by Tim Treuer.

In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil, and a better-developed canopy, researchers discovered a tayra (a dog-sized weasel) and a giant fig tree three feet in diameter, on the plot.

"You could have had 20 people climbing in that tree at once and it would have supported the weight no problem," says Jon Choi, co-author of the paper, who conducted much of the soil analysis. "That thing was massive."

Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.

In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers found that such forests absorb and store atmospheric carbon at roughly 11 times the rate of old-growth forests.

Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.

In many parts of the world, rates of deforestation are increasing dramatically, sapping local soil of much-needed nutrients and, with them, the ability of ecosystems to restore themselves.

Meanwhile, much of the world is awash in nutrient-rich food waste. In the United States, up to half of all produce in the United States is discarded. Most currently ends up in landfills.

The site after a deposit of orange peels in 1998.

Photo by Dan Janzen.

"We don't want companies to go out there will-nilly just dumping their waste all over the place, but if it's scientifically driven and restorationists are involved in addition to companies, this is something I think has really high potential," Treuer says.

The next step, he believes, is to examine whether other ecosystems — dry forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas — react the same way to similar deposits.

Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.

Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer had visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited more than 50. Neither had spotted the original sign.

In 2015, when Treuer, with the help of the paper's senior author, David Wilcove, and Princeton Professor Rob Pringle, finally found it under a thicket of vines, the scope of the area's transformation became truly clear.

The sign after clearing away the vines.

Photo by Tim Treuer.

"It's a big honking sign," Choi emphasizes.

19 years of waiting with crossed fingers had buried it, thanks to two scientists, a flash of inspiration, and the rind of an unassuming fruit.

This article originally appeared eight years ago.

From Your Site Articles

Science

Japanese microforests invented in the 1970s are transforming cities around the world

A microforest can achieve 100 years worth of growth within a single decade.

Wikimedia Commons

A microforest at Edappally Eranakulam

City life has its benefits, but usually at the expense of the environment. However, a trend in urban planning has been growing like weeds throughout various metropolitan areas. They’re called “microforests” and they’re bringing nature back to our streets.

The concept of microforests (also known as “tiny forests” or “Miyawaki forests”) was inspired by the work of Japanese botanist and plant ecologist Akira Miyawaki back in the 1970s. Using what is known as the “Miyawaki Method,” people would plant a diverse set of native plants and trees within a dense pace, usually in plots of land less than 100 square feet in size. If properly cared for, these trees and plants grow rapidly. In some cases, according to Euro News, a microforest can achieve 100 years worth of growth within a single decade when compared to the growth rates of regular forests. Which is good since monoforests are subjected to massive deforestation.

While there have been agreements and efforts to combat deforestation, a study from the World Resources Institute showed that 3.7 million hectares of tropical forest land was lost in 2023 alone. That’s ten soccer fields’ worth of trees lost every minute. With the United Nations projecting that 68% of the human population will live in an urban area by 2050, it’s looking like more and more of our world will be colored with gray concrete instead of lush green. But microforests could offset that.

See on Instagram

Over recent years, microforests have become more commonplace throughout the world, in England, Belgium, India, Pakistan, China, Japan, and the United States among other countries. This trend of adopting the Miyawaki Method has been proposed and practiced through all levels, from political action to city planning to just a local citizen getting a petition or permission to grow a microforest. It’s not surprising since microforests are a smaller task and ask compared to other environmental proposals being offered.

Not only that, but microforests are shown to be an effective way to improve the environment of a metropolis. They help cool a city down by reducing carbon emissions and providing additional shade from the tall trees. These healthy forests can also help enrich the local soil and water resources in the city, too. They also double as a local wildlife refuge and living space for animals that have been displaced due to city expansion.

See on Instagram

The benefits of microforests aren’t limited to just the environment, and provide more than just an aesthetic contrast to the streets and buildings surrounding citizens. Microforests provide a meeting place for organizations and friends like a public park. The cleaner air doesn’t just combat climate change, but also reduces the amount of pollutants and smog inhaled by city dwellers, per the National Institute of Health.

$A microforest in Baumpflanzaktion B\u00f6nningstedt$ A microforest in Baumpflanzaktion BönningstedtWikimedia Commons

If this is something that interests you for yourself or your community, you can take action. Depending on where you live and if you own property, you could even grow a microforest in your backyard if you wish. If you live in a city, you know how cramped it can be and how cooperation is necessary when living within a mass of thousands of people. Having something like a microforest to cool everyone down, physically and emotionally, can only benefit everyone.

From Your Site Articles

microforests

Heroes

21 trees going out on a limb to ask for your help.

Hello, human!

1. A tree grows amid a field of flowers. Photo by Guillaume Souvant/AFP/Getty Images.

Yes, you down there. We're talking to you.

2. Stars twinkle in the night sky over the treetops of a forest in Frankfurt. Photo by Patrick Pleul/AFP/Getty Images.

It's us — the trees.

3. Beautiful fall leaves. Photo by Ozma/Flickr.

We need a word with you. And it's important.

4. The sun rises in Honolulu, Hawaii. Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images.

Take a seat.

5. A tree made for climbing. Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images.

We feed you.

6. Trees: They give us fruit. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

We cool down cities and sidewalks.

We release water vapor into the air and provide much needed shade to homes and streets to help keep cities cool.

7. A row of ash trees in a Chicago park, which have been treated with insecticide to keep them safe from pests like the emerald ash borer. Photo by Nova Safo/AFP/Getty Images.

We provide a beautiful, affordable way to clean up air pollution.

Not to brag, but in Chicago alone, we remove 18,000 tons of air pollution each year. And in Kansas City? 26,000 tons! Amazing, right? You're welcome.

8. The midtown New York skyline behind blooming trees in Central Park. Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images.

We provide you with oxygen, free of charge.

9. A tree by the sea. Photo by Stephen Wernicke/Flickr.

And we even raise your property values and can help lower crime rates.

Again, you're welcome.

10. A Japanese white-eye (Zosterops japonicus) sits on a kanzakura tree in Taipei. Photo by Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images.

We don't do it for credit. But after helping out like this for millennia, we could use a favor.

11. Snow covered trees are seen as Amtrak's California Zephyr rolls past. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

We're being destroyed.

12. A deforested area in the Río Plátano biosphere reserve in the La Mosquitia region, Honduras. Photo by Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images.

We're not given an opportunity to thrive.

Even in areas where timber operations are illegal, like the Amazon jungle, the practice continues.

13. A deforested area in the middle of the Amazon jungle in Para, Brazil. Photo by Raphael Alves/AFP/Getty Images.

It's getting dire for some of us. And for the animals that call us home.

14. Trees provide homes and food for all kinds of wildlife. Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images.

Sumatran orangutans are just one species affected by Indonesia's booming palm oil industry. Millions of acres of prime peatland forest have been cleared to make way for plantations — a practice that releases tons of carbon, displacing trees and the destroying animal habitats.

So we need you to give a damn.

We saw some of you at the March for Science. Thanks for that. But you're not done.

People in Times Square at the March for Science in New York. Photo by Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images.

We need you to stand up for trees. In your communities, in your preserved natural spaces, and around the globe.

15. Coastal redwood trees at Muir Woods National Monument. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

We need you to support conservation efforts, buy and support companies and products that don't contribute to deforestation, and encourage sustainable tree planting and harvesting.

The demand for avocado is so high that it's fueling deforestation in Mexico. Farmers are thinning out existing pine forests to plant avocados. Not cool, folks.

16. Trees are better in bunches. Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images.

We need you to fight for us — because we've bent over backwards to do the same for you.

Cough, cough, "The Giving Tree," cough, cough.

17. A leaning tree near the Dinder national reserve, a protected region in Sudan. Photo by Ashraf Shazly/AFP/Getty Images.

Even when you make fun of us for accidentally having belly buttons.

18. Trees, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. Photo by William Warby/Flickr.

So, please, lend us a hand.

19. A boy climbs a tree near the lake Ammersee in the small Bavarian village of Herrsching, in southern Germany. Photo by Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images.

We'll keep doing our part to blow you away with our friggin' majesty.

20. Trees are gorgeous. Photo by Bram van de Sande/Flickr.

Stop by and visit us anytime, OK?

We really like watching all of you grow up.

21. A woman photographs blossoming cherry trees in Berlin, Germany. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

Warm regards,
The trees

Heroes

We're plunging this forest into a deep freeze to get a look into the future.

A bit chilly? At least you're not a tree.

Well, at least you're not one of these trees at the Hubbard Brooke Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. These trees are pretty cold.

That's because, since 2015, scientists have been putting these particular trees on ice.

All right, everyone, chill! Image from National Science Foundation/YouTube.

Charles Driscoll from Syracuse University and his colleagues are interested in how severe ice storms affect forests. There haven't actually been a lot of studies about this. But the scientists had a problem: Ice storms aren't exactly the most predictable or consistent things in nature. You can't schedule it ahead of time, after all.

So rather than wait for nature to provide a convenient ice storm, they decided to create their own.

Let's kick some ice! Image from National Science Foundation/YouTube.

Turns out there isn't an off-the-shelf forest-freezer though, so the scientists had to invent one. It looks a bit like a cross between a snowmobile and a firetruck. It uses hoses and pumps to suck up water from a nearby brook and blasts it 100 feet into the air, where the water turns into a fine freezing mist.

Of course, it only works if the air temperature is already below freezing, but overall, the effect is like putting the forest in a big wet freezer says Driscoll. "Experimentally, it worked out quite well."

The scientists have 10 roughly basketball-court-sized forest plots. Some are left alone. Others get a quarter, half, or three-quarters of an inch of ice, which allows the scientists to test different sizes of storm. For reference, half-an-inch of ice would be a pretty big storm. Three-quarters would be an epic one.

The team did a first round of freezing in early 2016. If all goes as expected, they'll do another round in January or February of 2017 and one in 2018.

"Thats the plan, assuming Mother Nature cooperates," says Driscoll.

This could help Driscoll and his team predict what the future holds for forests like this one.

What killed the dinosaurs? The ice age! Image from National Science Foundation/YouTube.

The scientists hope to get a holistic view of how a forest responds to big ice storms. They're looking at a ton of variables — how many branches are snapped off by the ice, for instance, and does all that dead wood makes wildfires more likely during other parts of the year? Are the trees growing differently? What about the birds? What about the insects? The scientists are studying all of that, both during the winter as well as the following seasons too.

"We make those measurements throughout the year," says Driscoll.

They're going to watch for both short- and long-term effects and use that information to build scientific models that can help predict how forests will respond to future storms.

My editor says I have to apologize for the Mr. Freeze puns. Image from National Science Foundation/YouTube.

This information might be good to know, since big ice storms might actually become more common in the future. We know climate change is already affecting weather patterns, and it may even be causing more of those polar vortexes that keep hitting Europe and the Northeast U.S.

It's pretty neat to see such an ambitious experiment.

"I think it's a good example of exciting experimental science," says Driscoll. They've got a lot of work ahead of them, but the results will hopefully be illuminating. "We're looking forward to seeing how the forest responds."

Family

10 weirdly named natural places in America and the stories behind them.

True

The Grand Canyon. The Rocky Mountains. The Great Lakes. Many of the names of our American natural wonders are ... a little on the nose.

To be fair, back in the day when people were exploring 3.8 million square miles of largely uncharted territory, literally circling the wagons to brainstorm the name of a random mountain or lake probably got old fast. “Well, they’re pretty rocky, ain’t they? Rocky Mountains — boom. Done.”

But in this vast, amazingly diverse land we call the United States, there are still lots of pretty damn strange names of natural features that might make you say, “Hm, maybe I should go to that pretty place with the funny name.”

As an avid hiker and fan of our national parks, here are a few of my favorite of those pretty places with funny names — and some that are still on my list of places to go.

1. Bumpass Hell, Lassen Volcanic National Park, California

Bumpus Hell: when the neighbor's hounds eat all your turkey.

GIF via "A Christmas Story."

Bumpass Hell, on the other hand, is something very different.

Bubbling mud pots. Colorful steaming pools. Overwhelming stench of rotten egg. Lassen Volcanic National Park in the northern Sierra Nevada is Yellowstone's lesser-known cousin. Its biggest area of thermal features has a name that would make Sir Mix-a-lot proud: Bumpass Hell.

Photo via T1madpaintballer/Wikimedia Commons.

It gets its moniker from Kendall Vanhook Bumpass, an ill-fated late-1800s settler who fell into one of its boiling mud pits, severely burning his leg, which is one way to enshrine your name in history, I guess.

Today, you can avoid Bumpass’ fate by exploring the stinky-but-surreal area from the safety of sturdy, carefully placed boardwalks.

2. Big Bone Lick State Park, Kentucky

Whoever decided to put a sign for this park on the freeway clearly didn't have the best interests of teenage boys in mind. We may never know how many ounces of Mountain Dew were lost to the limitless guffaws this name has caused over the years.

Photo by Mattguyver/Wikimedia Commons.

Putting aside the adolescent yuks, Big Bone Lick is still just a weird name. Contrary to how it sounds, this place was not named for licking any kind of bones. It’s the site of an ancient salt lick — mineral deposits where mammoths, mastodons, and other large animals fed and died, leaving their big bones for William Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) to dig up.

Ha-ha-ha, Big Bone Lick.

3. Unalaska Island, Alaska

Is this an oxymoron? Actually, no. Despite its name, this island is, in fact, in Alaska — in the 1,200-mile-long Aleutian archipelago, to be exact.

Unalaska doesn't mean un-Alaska — it's more along the lines of “near Alaska.” The word “Alaska” goes back to Russian colonial times, when it referred to the mainland of, yep, you guessed it: Alaska. “Unalaska” is thought to be a combination of Russian and the Aleut indigenous language meaning “near the mainland.” And while Unalaska may be hundreds of miles off the coast of mainland Alaska, that’s just a little jaunt in Alaska terms.

Photo via Wanetta Ayers/Wikimedia Commons.

3. Grand Tetons, Wyoming

The Grand Teton mountains are just ridiculously beautiful.

Yeah. Photo via tpsdave/Pixabay.

Early French trappers thought so too. So much so that these wondrous peaks reminded them of other beautiful things from back home when they first laid eyes on them. Legend has it that these early Francophoners named the peaks Les Trois Tetons — The Three Teats (or The Three Breasts).

Devil's advocate: These dudes were probably super homesick and lonely, like ancient mariners who imagined mermaids on long voyages.

Or, they were just French.

4. Dolly Sods, West Virginia

Finally, a national park covered in neatly manicured Bermuda grass! ... OK, not quite.

The strange name derives from an 18th-century German homesteading family — the Dahles — and a local term for an open mountaintop meadow — a "sods." The wilderness area is also full of sphagnum (peat moss) bogs due to its unique terrain and ecosystem.

Image via ForestWander/Wikimedia Commons.

It's gorgeous to look at — just watch where you step.

5. Mount Fairweather, Alaska

This 15,325-foot peak that sits on the border between Alaska and British Columbia has “the unofficial distinction of the worst-named mountain on earth” — as it actually has terrible weather.

Margerie Glacier and Mount Fairweather during some fair weather. Image via Eric E Castro/Wikimedia Commons.

Its moniker wasn’t given ironically, though: Legendary explorer Capt. James Cook supposedly named Mount Fairweather from the comfort of his ship offshore in 1778 during a rare period of clear skies.

The rare badass who's climbed it would likely say otherwise.

6. Donner Lake and Donner Pass, California

They say fortune favors the bold. "They" are wrong, at least sometimes. Fortune certainly didn't favor the bold but ill-fated Donner Party in 1846.

California-bound, the Donner Party group of settlers gambled on a newly discovered shortcut through the Sierra Nevada, past what was then called Truckee Lake. They hit a wall of early snow at the pass and ended up stranded for months in the freezing cold. They soon ran out of food and, faced with starvation, eventually resorted to cannibalism. Rescuers finally reached the camp in late February, leading about half of the original 87 members of the party to safety.

Donner Lake from Donner Pass. Image via Frank Schulenburg/Wikimedia Commons.

Today, busy Interstate 80 traverses the pass between Sacramento and Reno. Take a moment on your drive to pull off at the gorgeous Donner Lake viewpoint, remember this grisly bit of history, and give thanks for your warm bed and three squares a day.

7. Pando, aka Trembling Giant, Utah

This natural feature is unique on this list: It’s a living thing — an 80,000-year-old living thing. Formerly thought to be largest living thing in the world (the actual largest living thing in the world is now thought to be a humongous fungus in Oregon), Pando is a massive grove of 47,000 quaking aspens in Utah that are all one life-form. The trees are genetically identical and all grow from the same root system. Wild.

Photo via J Zapell/Wikimedia Commons.

Unfortunately, Pando isn’t doing so well. Overgrazing by deer and cattle is killing its young trees, which could lead to full collapse of the organism. Scientists, heroes that they are, are of course trying to save it.

8. Delmarva Peninsula

How do you name a peninsula shared between three different states? You combine their names, of course! The 170-mile-long Delmarva Peninsula, which forms the east side of the Chesapeake Bay, owes its name to the combination of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, all of which have a foothold on the landmass. Presumably, Virginia goes last because its sliver is the smallest. Hey, fair is fair.

Image via Planiglobe/Wikimedia Commons (altered).

9. Denali, Alaska

Denali. The stuff of legends. The highest peak in North America, at a staggering 20,310 feet.

Photo via skeeze/Pixabay.

Located in the eponymous national park in Alaska, this peak was recently in the news for a name change — or, more accurately, a name reversion. The word "Denali" means "the high one" in the local native Athabaskan language. What a perfect name, right? But as per usual, back in the day some greedy white dude mucked everything up by renaming it after newly elected President William McKinley, who these days is mostly known for being assassinated and succeeded by Teddy Roosevelt (sorry, Billy).

The national park was also called McKinley from 1917 to 1980. It was renamed Denali when it was combined with Denali National Monument. At that time, the Alaska state Board of Geographic Names also restored the mountain’s original name, but the U.S. Board on Geographic Names did not recognize it until President Obama put an end to all that last year, restoring it to its rightful name: Denali.

No word yet on whether President Trump will re-revert it to Mount McKinley. Or, knowing him, Mount Trump.

10. Glass Beach, Fort Bragg, California

Sometimes, one generation's trash makes another's paradise.

This beautiful beach is covered in litter. Seriously — it’s strewn with glass from a former city dump site. But the powerful California surf has shaped and polished millions of small shards into smooth pebbles, to colorful effect. (The red ones are old taillights.)

Photo via Gustavo Gerdel/Wikimedia Commons.

In a twist of irony, the glass at Glass Beach — which, again, is trash — is now protected by the California state parks as a “cultural feature,” which means you can’t remove any garbage from the beach.

Some of these places may sound made up, but they're very real, and they only begin to scratch the surface of what America has to offer.

If you're looking for a breath of fresh air and need something a little more novel than yet another trip to the Grand Canyon, give some of these breathtaking locales a try.

But a quick warning: Like many of Earth's greatest treasures, a few of these spots are in danger from climate change and other forms of human impact. (Glass Beach is basically made of garbage, for cryin' out loud.)

Visit them while you can — or, at the very least, let those catchy names be a constant reminder to always, always act in service of the planet.

From Your Site Articles

Heroes

We're putting this forest on fast-forward to learn what Earth will feel like in 100 years.

The plan is to give us a flash forward look at the Earth's future.

We've all been there — stuck in a cyclical conversation about some random hypothetical situation we can't actually imagine.

"If we can return to talking about the social media plan." "Please, David. David, no. David. DAVID. NO." Photo from iStock.

And then some blessed person shouts from the back of the meeting room and says, "Well, why don't we just go see for ourselves?"

Why spend all this time arguing about how something's going to go down when we can just go do it?

That "let's just go see for ourselves" attitude is why I love this weird forest experiment happening right now in New Hampshire.

Talking about climate change feels a lot like that awful meeting: We've nailed down a lot of the big questions about climate change — like where it's coming from — but a lot of the little things aren't as clear. And arguing about it can get ... tedious. It feels like a huge, insurmountable problem we can't quite grasp or tackle completely.

But at the Hubbard Brooke experimental forest in New Hampshire, a group of scientists are embracing the "let's go check it out" attitude.

Scientists are putting electric heaters in a small patch of forest to see what a warmer world will actually be like.

Hubbard Brooke forest. Photo by Mariel Carr, Chemical Heritage Foundation/Wikimedia Commons.

It's called the Climate Change Across Seasons Experiment and is being run by Professor Pamela Templer.

The idea is fairly simple: The scientists are putting electrical cables under about 6,000 square feet of forest soil. When they're turned on, the cables work kind of like a big electric blanket, warming the soil by about 9 degrees. That's not enough to bake anything or cause any real damage, but it does mimic what the average temperature of Earth may be like a hundred years from now.

They've been doing this since 2012, and they've found some interesting effects already.

In the heat, the trees as a whole are filtering less carbon from the air. Their roots also take up less nitrogen from the soil, which is actually changing the soil composition and might have domino effects further down the line.

From a scientific point of view, this could help us predict what'll happen to America's forests as a whole in 100 years.

This isn't just a cool experiment, though. It's also a refreshing moment of cutting through hypotheticals.

Science often thrives on careful discussion and consideration, but it's awesome to see people stepping away from hypothetical arguments and actually trying things out. It's freedom.

And we all know how that feels:

Photo from iStock.

We have a small favor to ask of you

forests

We used to throw away 10 million tons of coffee pulp every year. These researchers may have found a better use for it.

12,000 tons of food waste and 21 years later, this forest looks totally different.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.

Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.

Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.

Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.

A microforest can achieve 100 years worth of growth within a single decade.

Hello, human!

Yes, you down there. We're talking to you.

It's us — the trees.

We need a word with you. And it's important.

Take a seat.

We feed you.

We cool down cities and sidewalks.

We provide a beautiful, affordable way to clean up air pollution.

We provide you with oxygen, free of charge.

And we even raise your property values and can help lower crime rates.

We don't do it for credit. But after helping out like this for millennia, we could use a favor.

We're being destroyed.

We're not given an opportunity to thrive.

It's getting dire for some of us. And for the animals that call us home.

So we need you to give a damn.

We need you to stand up for trees. In your communities, in your preserved natural spaces, and around the globe.

We need you to support conservation efforts, buy and support companies and products that don't contribute to deforestation, and encourage sustainable tree planting and harvesting.

We need you to fight for us — because we've bent over backwards to do the same for you.

Even when you make fun of us for accidentally having belly buttons.

So, please, lend us a hand.

We'll keep doing our part to blow you away with our friggin' majesty.

Stop by and visit us anytime, OK?

A bit chilly? At least you're not a tree.

That's because, since 2015, scientists have been putting these particular trees on ice.

So rather than wait for nature to provide a convenient ice storm, they decided to create their own.

This could help Driscoll and his team predict what the future holds for forests like this one.

It's pretty neat to see such an ambitious experiment.

The Grand Canyon. The Rocky Mountains. The Great Lakes. Many of the names of our American natural wonders are ... a little on the nose.

1. Bumpass Hell, Lassen Volcanic National Park, California

2. Big Bone Lick State Park, Kentucky

3. Unalaska Island, Alaska

3. Grand Tetons, Wyoming

4. Dolly Sods, West Virginia

5. Mount Fairweather, Alaska

6. Donner Lake and Donner Pass, California

7. Pando, aka Trembling Giant, Utah

8. Delmarva Peninsula

9. Denali, Alaska

10. Glass Beach, Fort Bragg, California

Some of these places may sound made up, but they're very real, and they only begin to scratch the surface of what America has to offer.

The plan is to give us a flash forward look at the Earth's future.

We've all been there — stuck in a cyclical conversation about some random hypothetical situation we can't actually imagine.

That "let's just go see for ourselves" attitude is why I love this weird forest experiment happening right now in New Hampshire.

Scientists are putting electric heaters in a small patch of forest to see what a warmer world will actually be like.

They've been doing this since 2012, and they've found some interesting effects already.

This isn't just a cool experiment, though. It's also a refreshing moment of cutting through hypotheticals.