Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara are showing how abandoned coconut plantations have taken over Pacific islands, choking out many native plants, according to Earth.com.

Coconut palms are king throughout the tropics, serving as the foundation for human lives and cultures across the Pacific Ocean for centuries. However, 200 years of planting by colonial interests ...

What’s new: More than half of the tree cover in Pacific atolls is largely composed of “abandoned and overgrown” colonial-era coconut palm plantations, reveal satellite images in a study published in ...