| The forests of the Northeast stretch from West Virginia and Maryland northeastward through Maine. At the time of the first European settlement, virtually the entire region, some 127 million acres of land, was covered with forests. The exceptions were coastal and riverine marshlands and relatively limited areas cleared for agriculture by Indians, especially in southern New England and south along the coast. (Cronon 48-49)
Although the Northeast is broadly within the temperate eastern deciduous forest, the forests are varied, as determined by differences in terrain, climate, latitude, and human use of the landscape. (Yahner 2-8) The northern Appalachian Mountains and their extensions form the spine of the region, which includes parts of the dissected Allegheny Plateau to the west, and the Coastal Plain to the east. These lands lie generally in the Eastern Broadleaf, the Adirondack-New England Mixed Forest, and the Laurentian Mixed Forest Provinces. (Bailey) The mixed forest provinces have some significant areas of coniferous forests.
Human uses of the region’s forests included some clearing for agriculture and considerable manipulation of the vegetation by Indians with fire prior to European settlement. (Cronon 48-51) This was followed by heavy cutting in the 1700s and 1800s to clear land for farming and pasture. (id.; Raup) But through the Nineteenth and well into the Twentieth centuries, lumbering, often followed by wildfires, affected as much of the region’s forests as clearing for farming. In addition, many areas were heavily impacted by frequent cutting of hardwoods to make charcoal for smelting iron and brass and of hemlocks for their bark, which was used in tanning leather.
Public concerns about the logging and wildfires and their effects on the land led to two major initiatives to assure that some portion of the overall forest would be retained as forest. These were the creation of the Adirondack Forest Preserve and of the region’s federal National Forests. The Adirondack Preserve, established in the state constitution in 1894, is some 42 percent of “forever wild” state-owned land within the more than six million acres of the Adirondack Park, all within northern New York. (Terrie 10-23).
The 1911 Weeks Act provided for federal acquisition of forests in the eastern United States, which led to the creation of four National Forests in the Northeast: the Monongahela in West Virginia, the Allegheny in Pennsylvania, the Green Mountain in Vermont, and the White Mountain in New Hampshire and Maine. These National Forests were assembled from private forests that had in the main been heavily logged prior to 1920. (Shands and Healy 2-4) Together, their area is over 2.5 million acres, about two percent of the region.
Although getting some forests protected in public ownership was an important step forward in conservation, the shift of former forest lands out of agriculture and back into forests accomplished more. By 1907, the roughly 93 percent of the region that had been in forest in 1630 was reduced to about 47 percent. With time for forests to regrow on abandoned farm lands, the proportion of the region in forests grew to about 60 percent in 1953 and to two-thirds in 2002. (Smith, et al) This was accompanied by an increase in the volume of timber. From 1953 to 1997, the region’s overall timber volume increased by 96 percent, although there is considerable variation among the states. (ibid)
Overall increases in forest area and timber volumes have moderated earlier concerns with the state of the Northeast’s forests, but new concerns have emerged. Two have attracted most attention. One is the loss of natural forests relatively unaffected by human impact. The other is the character of forest management practices, especially those on private lands.
Public lands – the Adirondack Preserve and the National Forests, but also state-owned forest lands – have a clear role to play in maintaining reserves of protected natural forests. (Shands and Healy 235-236; Foster, et al 5-10) Adding to the area of public forests throughout the region has become a major objective of conservation interests. Establishment of wilderness areas on the National Forests under provisions of the 1974 Eastern Wilderness Areas Act continues as one avenue for achieving this objective, but added attention is being directed at the role of conservation easements on private forests. Such easements typically separate and restrict the right to develop the land for nonforest purposes from the rest of the bundle of property rights, thereby assuring that the land remains in forest.
Some forest management practices, especially clearcutting and high-grading of private timber stands, have continued as a focus of public policy dissension. A court decision regarding clearcutting in hardwood stands on the Monongahela National Forest in the early 1970s led to an act of Congress that changed management practices on the National Forests. It substantially limited clearcutting and put in place other restrictions on forest management practices on all National Forests in the country, including those in the Northeast. Implementation of these provisions has been the source of continuing controversy throughout the country.
More relevant for this region has been the changes in forestry practices brought about by the increased size and efficiency of logging equipment. This has led to an increase in even-age management, of which clearcutting is a common part, over the last few decades. This, in turn, has fostered public concerns with the disruption of natural processes, especially in parts of the region where large-scale industrial forest management is most common (e.g., northern Maine).
The Northeast is also the site of a major research project that has been providing for more than four decades important scientific information for understanding forest ecosystem processes. The Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Project in New Hampshire is a long-term research project sponsored by the U. S. Forest Service and a number of academic and other private research groups. Long-term integrated studies of the ecological, hydrological, and biogeochemical processes in a whole watershed have made it possible to measure the effects of acid rain, clearcutting, and other changes in factors that influence these processes. (Likens) This cooperative scientific project has had a major impact on the way the functioning of forests is viewed that extends far beyond the region.
CITATIONS
Bailey, R. G. 1980 Description of the ecoregions of the United States. Misc. Publ. 1391, U. S. Forest Service. Washington DC 77 pp.
Cronon, W. 1983. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Hill and Wang. New York NY. 241 pp.
Foster, D. et al. 2005 Wildlands and Woodlands. Harvard Forest, Harvard University. Petersham MA 24 pp.
Likens, G. E. 2004. Some perspectives on long-term biogeochemical research from the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study. Ecology: 85: 2355-2362.
Raup, H. 1966. The view from John Sanderson’s farm: a perspective for the use of land. J. Forest History 10:2-11.
Shands, W. E. and R. G. Healy. 1977. The Lands Nobody Wanted. The Conservation Foundation. Washington DC 282 pp.
Smith, W. D. et al. 2004. Forest Resources of the United States, 2002. Genl. Tech. Rpt. NC-241, U. S. Forest Service, St. Paul MN 137 pp.
Terrie, P. G. 1990. A park for the Adirondacks. In The Adirondack Park in the Twenty First Century:Technical Reports, V. One. State of New York 764 pp.
Yahner, R. H. 1995. Eastern Deciduous Forest. Univ. Minnesota Press, Minneapolis MN 220 pp.
Submitted June 2006
Updated 31 April 2007
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