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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.

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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.

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.

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\u00f6nningstedtA 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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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 Francophonersnamed 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.

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.

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.)

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.

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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.

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.

Heroes

11 real-world forests that look like they’re straight out of a fairytale.

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Forests are downright magical.

They're where some of our favorite fables take a twist, where Mother Nature hides her most fascinating creatures, where we go to escape the manmade chaos that consumes far too much of our time.

Forests are the lungs of our world, absorbing carbon and keeping our climates stable, and the protectors of some of our most precious resources. They safeguard habitats and wildlife that allow life to move onward and even make us healthier, too; trees clean our air, lower our stress, and can actually make us happier just by being nearby. They're spectacular.

But some forests, you might argue, are just a bit more spectacular than others.

Here are 11 otherworldly forests to remind you just how incredible life on Earth really is:

1. Bamboo Forest, Japan

Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images.

The Sagano Bamboo Forest on the outskirts of bustling Kyoto is famous for its towering green stalks that make enchanting rustling noises in the breeze you really can't hear anywhere else. Japan's Ministry of Environment included the destination on its "100 Soundscapes of Japan" list, encouraging visitors to find some much needed tranquility by listening to the natural sound effects.

2. Otzarreta Forest, Spain

Photo via iStock.

Foggy and tucked away, the Otzarreta Forest in Basque Country flaunts some of the quirkiest trees and branches you'll see on Earth (not to mention the most gorgeous fall colors, if you time it right). Northern Spain never looked so enticing.

3.  The Blue Forest, Belgium

Photo by John Thys/AFP/Getty Images.

Hallerbos, dubbed "The Blue Forest," covers hundreds of acres in Halle. Come mid-April, the entire region blossoms with a bright underbelly of bluebells, so the forest certainly lives up to its name. See the bluebells quick, though — they die in early summer, and the forest fades back into shades of greens and browns.

4. Redwood National Park, United States

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Redwood National Park stretches alongside the northern coast of California and boasts some of the tallest, most massive trees on the planet. Its trees can live to be — get this — some 2,000 years old, sprouting from seeds that are about the same size as one from a tomato.

5. The Black Forest, Germany

Photo by Arne Dedert/AFP/Getty Images.

In the hilly southwest corner of Germany, the sprawling Black Forest covers an area nearly 100 miles north to south. Its landscapes shift hues depending on the season — Germans know the frustration and beauty that come with a bitter, dreary winter better than anyone, after all — and its pines can be so dense in certain areas that sunlight can't break through to reach the forest floor. (Which is how it got its name. Get it?)

6. Amazon rainforest, Brazil

Photo by Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images.

News flash: The Amazon Rainforest is massive. Stretching nearly from coast to coast along the northern half of South America, the Amazon holds an abundance of life like no other place. It has 390 billion trees and 2.5 million various insects, which is one of the many reasons why it's so crucial we protect it from deforestation.

7. Jiuzhaigou, China

Image via iStock.

The Jiuzhaigou takes over a vast region of Sichuan province and boasts everything from towering alpine mountains and waterfalls to pools of purplish, teal waters and coniferous trees. Maybe shoot the next "Avatar" here? (See No. 11.)

8. The Daintree Rainforest, Australia

Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images.

The Daintree Rainforest off the coast of Queensland is an incredible example of why biodiversity is so important. As many species Down Under have been isolated from other mainlands, plants and animals have adapted over time to the geography's landscapes and features in unique ways. This is incredibly helpful for scientists who want to study how and why evolution works the way it does.

9. Avenue of the Baobabs, Madagascar

Photo by Aline Ranaivoson/AFP/Getty Images.

These "upside-down trees" in Madagascar are hundreds of years old and upwards of 98 feet. The avenue thankfully gained protective status in 2007, becoming the country's first national monument in an attempt to keep the area pristine for generations to come. One might argue it's not technically a forest, per se, but it's one cluster of trees too impressive to keep off the list.

10. Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, Costa Rica

Image via iStock.

Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve — located in one of the most biodiverse countries in the world — has a whopping 755 known species of trees. A wet and tropical climate means weather there stays relatively consistent throughout the year, and committed conservation efforts means sustainability stays a big priority.

11. Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, China

Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images.

Zhangjiajie National Forest's natural beauty and ecological importance to Asia earned its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which means it's very protected by conservation efforts. Famous in large part due to its towering, bare-rock formations, the forest was the inspiration behind some of the scenery in "Avatar."

Those were just 11 of the world's most magical forests. But really, this list could go on and on ... and on.

In fact, chances are, there's an amazing forest waiting to be explored not too far from your own front door. Safe adventuring.

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