Luther Blissett » Tue Sep 01, 2015 8:05 am wrote:Given your expertise, could we play out a thought experiment? If we could go back in time about 550 years, how do you think humans could peacefully and sustainably come and live together in North America without making the developmental mistakes of the Industrial Revolution? Nothing is off the table or too far into the realm of science fiction for me.
In 1500, how healthy were North America's wildernesses? How often did the people who lived here before use utilize thinning and prescribed fire? I don't think it's impossible for humans in greater numbers to have lived in harmony with them.
I'm going camping near a virgin forest this weekend in a very remote place and will be doing some hiking around in the designated Wild Areas. The guide says solitude is "almost guaranteed". I am looking forward to seeing a landscape like that for only the second time in my life and the first time being specifically conscientious of what "it means". I plan on meditating on what it would have meant for people to have thrived in a vast environment like that.
I do not think that we could have grown nor maintained any where near the same populations nor had the industrial revolution and maintained the same expanse nor quality of forest cover. Forests were exploited and at times considered a hindrance. Many of the low elevation forests of the best soils have long been removed from forest cover for urbanization or agriculture.
Many forest and plant communities have co-evolved with fire as a driver of ecological conditions with fire being required for regeneration or maintenance of specific kinds of forest. Long leaf pine in the Southeast and ponderosa pine in the West are good examples of forest types that co-evolved with fire and that were deliberately burned by aboriginals. The last 500 years has seen a degradation and shrinking extent of this type of primeval forest; the featured species were selectively removed and incidentally or deliberately replaced by other species. The stands have not been allowed to reach the same age. The more frequent low intensity ground fires have been replaced by catastrophic fires. Stressors of the forest often are multiple and re-enforcing. Drought and insects. Fire and soil pathogens. Some combinations of fire and thinning are the ecological path to the improve the vigor and health individual trees, stands, and landscapes.
IMHO most attempts to applied agriculture models to forest management are by their nature ill-conceived for the stability and net productivity of forest ecosystems. Forest Health is a hazy and political term. I find terms such as stability, net productivity, biodiversity, resilience, age and size and volume classes, species present, plant associations, etc. more useful. Humans have cornered ourselves where the choice to do no active management is in itself active management. What may seem "Wilderness" in law or effect on the National Forests is coded as polygons on maps and GIS, data recorded, and scenarios modeled and set as policy.
Aboriginal people regularly used fire for cultural purposes; specifically to favor certain plants or animals and to maintain a more open character of the forest. The aboriginal management is most evident in the conifer forests of the West and Southeast.
The initial European settlers cleared forests for living space and agriculture land and used wood fuel and building material as populations moved East to West across the continent.
Wood was the primary energy source for the nascent industrial revolution. Much of the forest in the Northeast USA, specifically New England, was cleared for wood fuel and small agriculture plots. The extent of forest in the northeast has been re-occupying forest land that was once cleared for at least the last 100 years. The forests of the Northeast are notable for the old stone fences and other ruins. The Eastern White Pine and American Elm that were the monarchs of the forest and utilitarian species at European contact have diminished in import because their populations have been severely impacted by white pine blister rust and Dutch Elm disease, both introduced pathogens.
Pine forest was removed from forest cover and converted to cotton and other agriculture in the Southeast. A long term trend in the Southeast (like the Northeast) has been the growth of forest cover, much in pine plantations on land that was once cleared for cotton.
The early timber industry depended upon water for transportation until the railroads and then mobile equipment and trucks. Forests were cut with little regard as the timber industry moved on for new forests to exploit. Sometimes, particularly in the Lake States, wildfire raged across the cutover lands. Forest industry traveled from the Northeast to the Southeast and Lake States and then to the West. Forest industry has shifted back to the Southeast from the West in the last 25 years. Railroads were important to the exploitation of western forests in land ownership patterns and removal of forests from the public domain. Typically, the railroads were allocated alternate sections for six miles on each side of the railroad. This is how much of the corporate timberland in the West came to private ownership. The railroads and their successors achieved an economic windfall and did not act in good faith regards to the process whereas they gained title.
I find the forests of Southeast Alaska of interest because they are so young, having been under ice in the last ice age and very simple in species mix and function. The two overwhelmingly dominant species are Western Hemlock and Sitka spruce with Alaska Yellow Cedar replacing Western Red Cedar as one moves west. The soils are shallow and wet; wind throw and mass movement are regenerating events rather than fire. The fires one hears about in Alaska are mostly tundra and brush rather than forests that are or could be commercial forests. The cedars were most important to the aboriginal people for boats, homes, and totem poles.
Commercial forests, woodlands, and Wilderness, Parks, and other set-asides are important to differentiate for ecological, spiritual, and utilitarian values. I would like to see more old forests, both commercial and non-commercial. Old forests take faith. One may create low hanging fruit for more exploitive folks. Old forests also make ecologic sense. Individuals and humanity in general are doomed. One way to ease our doom is to be kind to the forests and the plants and creatures resident.
To me there is no other perception like being in a forested Wilderness (legal) or wilderness (function). Forest complexity is Escher and fractal; forests rhyme and harmonize and integrate history. The nature of man is to fight Nature rather than fit into a flow. I grew up within a National Forest and went to work as a USFS aide summers age 16 rather than spend time in Dad's gravel quarry. Seeing what was going on, the limits of the primary forest, sent me on an idealistic quest to university. The times spent in the forest are the best and truest of my life, better than rock and roll or romantic love. I am sad for humanity: too many, too territorial, and too violent. People won't see the same quality of forests (and we should) until human population is greatly reduced and attitudes change.
Sorry my response is so general.
Enjoy your trip.
