Hardcover(Revised edition originally published in 1986)
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Overview
Ancient writers observed that forests always recede as civilizations develop and grow. The great Roman poet Ovid wrote that before civilization began, “even the pine tree stood on its own very hills” but when civilization took over, “the mountain oak, the pine were felled.”
This happened for a simple reason: trees have been the principal fuel and building material of every society over the millennia, from the time urban areas were settled until the middle of the nineteenth century. To this day trees still fulfill these roles for a good portion of the world’s population.
Without vast supplies of wood from forests, the great civilizations of Sumer, Assyria, Egypt, Crete, Greece, Rome, the Islamic World, Western Europe, and North America would have never emerged. Wood, in fact, is the unsung hero of the technological revolution that has brought us from a stone and bone culture to our present age.
Until the ascendancy of fossil fuels, wood was the principal fuel and building material from the dawn of civilization. Its abundance or scarcity greatly shaped, as A Forest Journey ably relates, the culture, demographics, economy, internal and external politics and technology of successive societies over the millennia.
The Forest Journey was originally published in 1989 and updated in 2005. The book's comprehensive coverage of the major role forests have played in human life — told with grace, fluency, imagination, and humor — gained it recognition as a Harvard Classic in Science and World History and as one of Harvard's "One Hundred Great Books." Others receiving the honor include such luminaries as Stephen Jay Gould and E.O. Wilson. This is a foundational conservation story that should not be lost in the archives. This new, updated and revised edition emphasizes the importance of forests in the fight against global warming and the urgency to protect what remains of the great trees and forests of the world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781938340970 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Patagonia |
| Publication date: | 02/14/2023 |
| Edition description: | Revised edition originally published in 1986 |
| Pages: | 520 |
| Sales rank: | 645,780 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.20(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
THE IMPORTANCE OF FORESTS FOR OUR SURVIVAL
The Value of Old-Growth Forest Rediscovered
An article in Science magazine that appeared in 1990, [KO1] [JD2] the [KO3] same year as the spotted owl controversy proved the timber industry’s denigration of old-growth to be wrong. The authors first addressed the contention of the industry and their academic apologists’ derogation of old-growth: “It has been suggested the CO2 content of the atmosphere could be reduced if slowly growing ‘decadent’ old-growth forests were converted to faster growing, younger, intensely managed forests.”[1] The paper disagreed, arguing that the critical factor is “the amount of CO2 stored in the forest, not the rate of CO2 uptake” and that “logging dramatically takes down the carbon [dioxide] sequestration capability.” As a consequence, “the conversion of old-growth forests to younger forests has been a source of increasing CO2 over the last century.” Researchers found that “rotations of tree crops” over a fifty-, seventy-five-, or one hundred‒year period would store only 38 percent, 44 percent, and 51 percent, respectively, of the carbon that an old-growth stand would retain. In fact, according to this breakthrough study, the harvesting of old-growth is even more damaging to CO2 storage than if a fire had swept through the same forest.
Twenty-four years later, scientists learned that old-growth trees not only act as carbon dioxide reservoirs but “actively fix larger amounts of carbon compared to smaller trees” due to the fact that the amount of leaves (including needles)—the epicenter of photosynthesis—increases as the square of trunk diameter.[2] In other words, if the trunk’s diameter increases tenfold, it will undergo a one hundred‒fold increase in total leaf mass, enhancing the tree’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and add oxygen to the air.
Studies concerning old-growth have aged well. A major paper, appearing also in Science magazine, published March 21, 2022, shows that monoculture plantations—that is, growing trees like crops—do not perform very well when it comes to carbon storage and soil erosion control, as compared to old-growth. The study also reveals just how sterile the surrounding environment becomes in plantations that have replaced natural forests, hosting far less animals and plants than did the formerly untouched tree cover.[3]
Carbon Storage and Forest Soils: Trees as Geochemical Agents
Until recently, scientists focused primarily on inorganic rather than biologic interactions with the Earth’s surface to explain how most atmospheric carbon dioxide gets captured. Only in the last several decades has science discovered that trees’ deep roots and their helpful mycelium have also played a significant role over time in locking up CO2 safely in the Earth’s crust.[4] Roots physically break up rocks, invading small cracks and enlarging them with their growth as time goes by.[5] These same roots attack the most commonly found rocks underground with their acidic and enzymatic juices, releasing certain nutrients—calcium, magnesium, and phosphorous. While the main portion of these elements feeds the tree, the remainder eventually drains from the soil and winds up in the ocean. Similarly, when a tree dies, its roots surrender the remaining calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus as ions in solution along with dissolved carbon.[6] Some of this feeds new plants; the rest again finds its way into rivers that flow into the sea. In both cases chemical reactions ensue between the dissolved calcium, magnesium, and carbon and nascent mollusks, corals, and phytoplankton in the ocean to help give them their protective exteriors.[7] When these organisms die, much of the former carbon dioxide and calcium becomes limestone, removing a portion of this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere for millions of years. The excess phosphorus fertilizes the plankton to enhance their growth which increases their intake of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis while magnesium turns into a mineral called magnesite which also locks in carbon dioxide. When these organisms die, much of the former carbon dioxide and calcium becomes limestone, removing a portion of this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere for millions of years.[8]
In fact, recent research has found that “roots act like a thermostat, drawing more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere when it is warm and less when it is cool,” according to Dr. Christopher Doughty, lead author of a study published in Geophysical Research Letters.[9] The importance of roots, long underrated, has become of great interest, requiring scientists to reassess their role in the global carbon cycle.[10] As a consequence of this new interest, it has been discovered that on average, roots comprise about 28 percent of the biomass in a tree.[11][KO4] [JD5]
Dead roots also give up CO2 as bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, insects, and probably many other life-forms feed on them, as well as on the decomposing leaf fall. Since most of these activities happen underground, the majority of the carbon dioxide cannot return to the atmosphere. Instead, it turns into an acidic form that leaches rock and removes similar minerals as live roots do.[12] Again, much of this leached material flows down waterways into the ocean, eventually ending up as limestone, adding to the long-term extraction of carbon dioxide from the air.[13] As far back as the latter part of the eighteenth century, the French chemist Lavoisier noticed the great amount of carbon dioxide “which is neutralized by a particular earth called lime.”[14]
While roots break down preexisting rock to “make” soil, the forest canopy protects it from the wind and sun and from the buffeting and erosive force of direct hits by rain. Fallen branches and leaves mix with the soil to act as a sponge that soaks in the carbonic acid—diluted carbon dioxide (commonly known as rainwater) rather than allowing it to rush down in torrents to eventually acidify the oceans. Instead, the trapped water joins that carbon-sequestering slurry that finally ends up as limestone deep in the seabed.
Let us not forget, the vast beds of coal are in large part buried forests from an earlier day. Lignin—the material that makes trees rigid and woody—results in logs very resistant to decomposition.[15] Their burial in swamps and in the ocean led to the permanent removal from the atmosphere of huge amounts of carbon dioxide and the addition of oxygen, a removal that we are reversing with our use of coal.[16] All those nutrients that forests released to lakes and especially the sea fueled the growth of phytoplankton and thus the zooplankton that fed upon them, both of which, upon burial and compression and heating, became oil.[17] Had they been left alone, we would not be facing the existential catastrophe presented by climate change that the maintenance of the undisturbed ecology of the forest can help alleviate. As world-renowned carbon dioxide experts concluded in their study of the geochemistry of trees, “plant evolution … has been a major factor in the atmosphere and of climate over geological time.”[18] As a striking empirical proof of this assertion, the recent deforestation of the island of Borneo[19] resulted in, according to NASA researchers, the greatest increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions over the last two millennia, as a consequence of both burning the trees and the underlying peatlands they had formed that contain great amounts of stored carbon.[20]
Over the long-term, conditions get even worse. With both the trees cut down and the understory cleared, the destroyed forest system no longer can perform the services required to maintain a temperate climate as they have for almost four hundred million years, beginning with the advent of Archaeopteris.
Forests, Temperature Control, and Water Supply
Forests do more to keep the Earth temperate than remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Like fans, treetops cause the air surrounding them to circulate to moderate temperatures in their vicinity. The leaves of trees also emit great amounts of water into the atmosphere, which, in the process of changing into vapor, absorb heat in the same fashion as perspiration keeps our bodies from overheating and cool the surrounding land. As an example, without the forest canopy, seasonable temperatures in the Amazon basin could get up to 41 degrees warmer.[21] Leaves, especially those of conifers, also release packets of particles called aerosols into the air, reflect sunlight back into space and help form clouds that block incoming sunlight from hitting the Earth and converting to heat. They seed clouds, which reflect a goodly portion of the incoming sunlight back into the sky, preventing the sun’s rays from striking the Earth, which would then convert into heat.[22] Climate-change scientist Gordon McFiggens calls the phenomena, “One of the main climate feedback cycles.”[23] Or as BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath quips, the “smell of forest pine can limit climate change.”[24]As forestry expert Ryan Bright explains, although “forests often absorb more solar radiation than grasslands or croplands … these latter mechanisms are often more important [in cooling the Earth], even in some of the higher latitude regions, where surface albedo [reflectivity of sunlight] has conventionally been given more weight.”[25] Forests in the more northerly latitudes also help to keep the planet cool by storing in their soil about 50 percent of all the land-based carbon in the world.[26]
Old-growth forests also rate as the best cover for watersheds. A report titled “Running Pure” by the World Wildlife Foundation, a study of the world’s top 105 cities (twenty-five each from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe, and five from Australia), demonstrated the global importance of forests to urban water supplies.[27] Rainfall and runoff data obtained in the study from the Melbourne area, for example, showed that water yield correlates directly with the age of a forest. Deforestation can cause the mean annual runoff in a watershed to decline up to 50 percent. It takes up to 150 years of regeneration to reach optimum water yield.[28] Mature forests excel at regulating the flow of water throughout the year, at preventing sedimentation, and at filtering out impurities. Researchers have developed ways to value a forest’s worth in protecting the supply of water throughout the world, calculating its value at $2.3 trillion, or nearly six times the worth of today’s timber trade.[29]
Corporations and municipalities have begun to recognize the economic value of sustaining forests for keeping water supplies clean and available. In one example, heavily farmed watersheds threatened the integrity of the aquifers that supplied the bottlers of beverage brand Perrier.[30] The company found that reforesting was far cheaper than building filtration plants. Likewise, the City of New York found it far less expensive to buy up conservation easements along its watersheds, guaranteeing the presence of forests to purify the water to the same quality as would proposed new facilities costing $6 to $8 billion with annual operating costs ranging between $300 and $500 million.[31]
Over the last hundred years, the City of Seattle has spent large sums buying land piece by piece to protect the integrity of the Cedar River, its water source.[32] The city found that the quality of water had suffered on lands already clear-cut and where logging was going on. In 1998, Paul Schell ran for mayor on a platform advocating modest rate increases to end logging and implement Seattle’s Habitat Conservation Plan for the 90,000-acre watershed. Schell was elected. The city no longer permits logging and has also implemented its pioneering plan to ensure the survival of endangered species in the watershed. Having a plan that various regulators have approved for the next fifty years gives the city the certainty that it will not lose the right to manage its water operations over a reasonable period. As a consequence, Mami Hari, the general manager and CEO of Seattle’s public utilities, could report that the city’s drinking water “is among the best in the nation, both in purity and taste.”[33] Other major urban areas in America focusing on protecting their water supplies by maintaining the forest health of their watersheds include Boston, as well as West Coast cities of Portland, San Francisco, and Tacoma. Leaving watersheds naturally forested often becomes a compelling, cost-effective approach.
But do forests actually generate rainfall?[34] For the longest time, most believed evaporation of large areas of water, primarily oceans, produced the world’s rain.[35] But in 1977, geologist Dr. Irving Friedman observed that the Amazon receives vast quantities of water “derived from recycled transpired moisture”[36] primarily produced by the jungle’s canopy. Two years later Brazilian meteorologist Dr. Eneas Salati quantified Friedman’s account that proved that half of the rainfall in the Amazon comes from the forest.[37] In an article, whose title says it all—“Angiosperms Helped Put the Rain in the Rainforest”—demonstrates that the loss of tree cover in the Amazon would result in the diminution of more than five feet of rainfall per year and an extension of the current dry season by eighty days in the Amazon basin![38]
Recent research not only confirms Friedman and Salati’s work but builds on it, conclusively demonstrating that intact forests also supply rain to areas distant from their locations.[39] Deeply rooted trees, like powerful pumps, pull up water from the ground into their leaves to photosynthesize and release excess water as vapor into the air. The resulting vapor travels as clouds, which then condense in some far-away area to become rain. For example, rain originating in the West African rain forest―primarily the Congo basin―provides the Nile River with about 40 percent of its water supply.[40]The main source of rainfall for southeastern South America comes from the Amazon.[41] Sixty-seven million people living in southeastern South America, including urban centers such as São Paulo, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires, rely on evaporation by the Amazonian canopy for 70 percent of their rainfall.[42] The majority of rainfall in China originates from moisture generated by the Atlantic Ocean and relayed by the boreal forests of Scandinavia and Russia.[43] [JD6] The physical principles underlying these new discoveries have led many climatologists, foresters, and hydrologists to further speculate that forests may take on the role of being a major driver of atmospheric circulation of our planet, challenging long-held concepts of climate science.[44] It takes little imagination to consider the catastrophe that would occur should these agents of water transfer, and possibly air circulation, disappear. If not for the forest, interiors five hundred miles or more away from large bodies of water would likely become deserts![45]
“Trees absorb carbon dioxide. They give us oxygen. They help to make rain. So they are a gift,” concluded renowned environmentalist Jane Goodall in her campaign to plant a trillion trees by 2030.[46]
Migratory Birds and Forest Health
A major study of plants, birds, and insects in the tropics concluded that “only old-growth forests … are capable of maintaining a substantial proportion of biodiversity.”[47] The declining population of birds that winter in the tropics but breed during the warmer months in temperate North America serves as an example. The authors of a recent article in the prestigious journal [KO7] Science wrote, “We report population losses across much of the North American avifauna over forty-eight years, including once-common species and from most biomes. Integration of range-wide population trajectories and size estimates indicates a net loss approaching 3 billion birds, or 29 percent of 1970 abundance. A continent-wide weather radar network also reveals a similarly steep decline in biomass passage of migrating birds over a recent ten-year period.”[48] Their decline correlates with the increased removal over the last fifty years of forests where they previously could “fatten up” in the warmer south on fruits and insects for that one thousand‒plus mile flight northward.[49] Without sufficient calories, they either fall from the sky or lack the energy upon arrival to nest and breed. We’re not talking here of exotic birds, but two hundred or more species of garden-variety songbirds that include warblers, orioles, flycatchers, swallows, hummingbirds, and thrushes.[50] Even if migrating birds complete their journey north, they face existential threats due to human-induced changes in temperate forests. As farmlands cut into formerly pristine woodlands in the northern states, cowbirds, for example, will follow, ransack nests, and place their eggs for the unsuspecting migrant to hatch. The demand for pulp to turn into toilet paper threatens the continuity of North America’s far northern forests, nicknamed the Western Hemisphere’s “great bird nursery.” Not only do billions of birds and three hundred–plus species nest there, but the area also serves as an important region for many birds to rest and refuel en route to breeding grounds all the way to the Arctic.[51]
But who cares about the well-being of some foreign birds that take advantage of our American lands in summer? Consider this: some like the hummingbirds pollinate our crops and flowers; others are among the most important predators of wood-boring and leaf-eating insects, protecting America’s woodlands from devastation.[52] In fact, the survival of both temperate and tropical forests, as well as the birds themselves, has developed into an intricately woven codependency: fruits from forest trees provide much of the food eaten by birds; modifications in their gut allow them to digest the flesh of the fruit while not the seeds, which by excreting or vomiting, they sow far and wide to become trees again. In some species, their digestive tract drastically enhances the seeds’ chances of germination.[53] As one ornithologist observed a century ago, “Birds alone would soon replant [reforest] all cleared lands were it not for the mowing machine, the reaper and tools of cultivation.”[54]
Birds also are necessary for feeding humanity. Consider Chairman Mao’s war against the sparrows: He led the decimation of these birds in the notion that their demise would lead to greater yields by preventing them from feeding on wheat. Instead, with their passing, the insects they would have devoured ate the entire crop, helping to create the greatest famine in the history of the world in which 25 to 50 million people perished.[55]
Forests and Human Health
Birds, of course, are not the only beings threatened by forest destruction. Deforestation and forest fragmentation in the northeastern United States, for example, appears as a major factor in the spread of Lyme disease. As logging and population incursions have wreaked havoc on its woods, a multitude of mammals, birds, and reptiles supported by healthy forests has given way to one species: the white-footed mouse. During more heavily wooded times, predation and competition by diverse animal life kept the mouse population in check. This also put a brake on the population of ticks, which spread Lyme disease.[56] Ticks that feed on these mice develop higher infection rates than they would sucking the blood of any other animals formerly endemic to the region, increasing the chance of those humans who wander into these previously benign, densely treed areas to fall ill with this debilitating, sometimes fatal disease. As Dr. Richard Ostfeld—a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in Millbrook, New York, who has studied a genus of ticks, Ixodes, for many years—stated, “The best host for the tick and pathogens is not deer but white-footed mice. And they do beautifully when you chop the forest into bits. They thrive. And competitors do not.”[57]
Farther south, cases of malaria have increased with the rate of deforestation. For example, cutting down trees for cattle grazing, farming, and mining was promoted by the Brazilian government beginning in the late 1960s. Malaria expanded rapidly during those years, reaching over 600,000 cases a year by the turn of the twenty-first century. While forested areas in the Amazon abound in mosquitoes, the species that carries malaria is relatively rare.[58] Deforestation provides this species with many new habitats for breeding, such as partially sunlit pools of water.[59] In areas cleared of trees, biting rates of malarial-carrying mosquitoes are 278 times greater than in predominately forested areas.[60] As one reporter noted, “The Amazon is burning at the hands of humankind, but the jungle might just come back to bite those who are responsible. Literally.”
While these deforestation-induced diseases have devastated local populations, neither can compare to the worldwide Coronavirus. Don’t think the world was not warned, though. In 2018, two years before the great pandemic engulfed the world, a very provocatively titled paper, “Bats, Coronaviruses, and Deforestation: Toward the Emergence of Novel Infectious Diseases?” appeared in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology. The authors of the online paper pointed out their credible theory, “Bats are hosting many viruses and in particular coronaviruses.” In an earlier time, such a condition would not have aroused concern since bats and humans did not interact; bats were found only in the uninhabited forest. During the last forty years, though, the situation drastically changed. Burgeoning populations engaged in farming, hunting, and logging hacked away at the jungle.
Bats, like the white-footed mouse and mosquitoes, have prospered in their new surroundings, “generating thus a higher diversity of bats and in turn of bat-borne viruses next to human dwellings.” Consequent bat-driven diseases that might have remained isolated travel the same roads built initially by loggers and then traversed by hunters and farmers[61]—all of whom impinge on the forest and its wildlife—reaching distant markets that hold greater numbers of people and access to points beyond.[62] The authors presciently concluded, “Given the share of CoVs [coronaviruses] described in bats (i.e., 31 percent) the risk of newly emerging CoVs-associated diseases in the future should be considered seriously. The situation is quite different with the emergence of a novel pathogen within the immune-naive human population. In such a case, the risk of large epidemics is very high along with high mortality.”
In fact, just before handing in the manuscript came ominous news from Nature magazine: “Coronavirus Similar to Sars-Cov-2 [Covid-19] Found in Laos Cave Bats.”[63]
Bat-borne viruses have “been around for millions of years,” concludes Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes, who interviewed Dr. Peter Daszak, British zoologist, consultant, and public expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonotic infections. “So why didn’t this happen before?” Pelley asked rhetorically. “Because the bats are on the move today, chased out by man because of deforestation.”[64] Dr. Veasna Duong, virologist at the Instituit Pasteur du Cambodia, confirmed this conclusion, stating, “Humans were responsible for the devastation caused by COVID-19, due to interference and destruction of natural habitats.”[65] Science has substantiated Jane Goodall’s succinct explanation of the cause of the pandemic so well, stating, “I don’t blame the bats. I blame us. The bats are perfectly fine, if they are left alone where they belong. The trouble is that we have invaded their habitat … [by] destroying the forest where they live. We thus come in closer contact with them,”[66] leading the website Bloomberg Business to suggest, we must “discourage jungle deforestation, which pushes animals (and the viruses they carry) into closer proximity with people.” [67] Diseases are filtered and blocked by a range of predators and habitats in a healthy, biodiverse forest.
[caption] [map] Hauntingly prophetic, a map published in the journal Nature in 2017, shows Wuhan and its surroundings as a hot spot for zoonotic diseases due to its surging population spilling into nearby forests. [68]
Humanity’s survival therefore rests, in the words of Pennsylvania State Universityvirologist Suresh V. Kuchipudi, “on constructive conservation strategies to prevent deforestation and reduce animal-human interactions … [which] would be an indispensable tool in helping us fight these deadly and terrifying epidemics.”
Old-growth forest systems now and in the future take on equally significant roles as they did in the past. This time it is their protection, rather than extraction, that will allow civilization to flourish
ENKIDU AND HUMBABA’S CURSE
Gilgamesh took great pride in various outrageous acts he and Enkidu committed against the gods, of which the killing of Humbaba and cutting down the cedar trees stood out as one of the most egregious. Gilgamesh forgot Humbaba’s curse, “May the pair of you not grow old together!” for not sparing Humbaba’s life and the cedar forest as well.[69]
On their return to Uruk, Gilgamesh celebrated into the night his blasphemous deeds. “Who is the most glorious of fellows?’ he asked rhetorically to his serving girls in his great palace.[70] And then replied, “Gilgamesh!”[71]
Enkidu, though, belatedly repented, turning to Gilgamesh and saying, “We have turned the forest into a wasteland. How shall we answer to our God[Enlil]?”[72]
Little did Enkidu and Gilgamesh know that the chief gods were holding council to deal with these two apostates. Anu, the god of the sky, entered the indictment: “Because these two people have slain … Humbaba, and . . . stripped the mountains of their cedars, one of them must die!” Enlil, chief god and arbitrator, chose that one to be Enkidu, for he was made by the gods solely to protect the plants and animals from the killing hand of civilization and then betrayed his calling.[73] The gods caused Enkidu to come down with a mortal illness much like the Coronavirus. For eleven days Enkidu lay sick, full of agony with his mind deranged by fever, never to arise from his bed again. Shaken to the core by Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh—the great civilizer—threw off his robes, walked away from his kingdom and aimlessly roamed under an indifferent sky, weeping bitterly, condemned to suffer death in life, for he was the one who killed Humbaba, the Guardian of the Forest, and stripped the mountains of their cedars.[74]
Could this be our story as well?
