How Nineteenth-Century Planting Turned Ascension Island into a Cloud Forest

Charles Darwin and Joseph Dalton Hooker helped plan a project to use cloud moisture and plant seeds from British colonial botanical gardens on Ascension Island. Over five decades, the volcanic island was transformed from a dry landscape into a humid rainforest. Researchers are now studying this documented case of human-driven ecosystem restoration to understand whether ecological collapse can be reversed.

Ascension Island lies in the Atlantic and was once a dry volcanic landscape with only a few dwarf fern species. In the 1800s, Charles Darwin and Joseph Dalton Hooker visited its British naval base and helped plan using cloud moisture and seeds from colonial botanical gardens. About fifty years of planting created a humid summit forest, while desert conditions remained nearby.

Researchers from Pompeu Fabra University's Complex Systems Laboratory spent a month on Ascension with conservation officials. They studied historical records, including charts, logbooks, and letters, and sampled soil microbiomes across different areas. Their aim is to understand how this documented transformation happened and whether such insights might help reverse ecosystem degradation.