Discover the world's greatest woodlands on 'Planet Earth: Seasonal Forests'

From the evergreen forests of the frozen North to the deciduous dry forests of the Equator, Planet Earth’s “Seasonal Forests” reveals the greatest woodlands on earth.

 

At the edge of the Arctic, the Taiga forest is a silent world of stunted conifers cloaked in snow and ice. The trees may be small, but filming from helicopter and satellite reveals its true scale. It’s a belt that circles the globe, broken only by ocean, and containing a third of all trees on earth. During the short summer, it produces so much oxygen that it changes the atmosphere. The forests may be vast but the animals are scarce, including wandering loners such as the lynx and wolverine.
 

 

Travelling further South reveals that it is the trees that are the stars. In California, the cameras fly up the tallest trees on earth - giant redwoods over 100 meters high. General Sherman, a giant sequoia, is ten times the size of a blue whale and the largest living thing on the planet. The oldest organisms alive are the bristlecone pines that, at more than 4,000 years old, pre-date the pyramids.

 

The broadleaf forests of North America and Europe bustle with animal life. The most startling illustration of their richness only happens once every 17 years, when the nymphs of the cicada burst from the soil as adults, creating the biggest-ever insect emergence.

 

In the forest of Eastern Russia, the rare amur leopards struggle to survive in the freezing temperatures. There are fewer than 40 of these cats remaining in the wild. Extraordinary and intimate footage captures the mother leopard’s struggle to feed her cub.

 

Planet Earth “Seasonal Forests”, narrated in Filipino by Raffy Tima, airs in two parts on September 23 and 24, Wednesday and Thursday night, after Saksi, on GMA.