Autumn Comes to Bieszczady When the Beeches Stop Making Green
On 8 October 2026, the Operational Land Imager on the NASA-USGS Landsat 9 satellite caught southeast Poland's Bieszczady National Park mid-transformation. European beech dominates the park's forests, with sycamore maple among the species adding to the autumn display — beech and other deciduous trees blanketing the hillsides starting to sport reds and golds.
The colour itself is subtraction. Dropping air temperatures and waning daylight cause these trees to curtail production of chlorophyll, the molecule plants use to synthesise food. As that production falls away, the leaves' green pigments fade, and the yellows and reds of other pigments show through. Which means the cue to stop making food is also the cue that lets the other colours appear: nothing needs to be painted on for the hillside to go gold.
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Which makes autumn a reveal rather than a repaint. The yellows and reds show through once the green production falls away, so the show is created by what the tree stops doing, not by what it starts doing.
Reveal is a generous word for it. Colder air and shorter days make the tree curtail production of the molecule it uses to synthesise food — that's a wind-down, and the colour is a side effect of the shutdown. Beautiful side effect, admittedly.