Miscellaneous Issues
We face many challenges in the 21st Century. However, by understanding the issues and options we can make informed choices. This section provides overviews of complex topics and links to more detailed information.
American Forests by Kim Ward
My name is Kim Ward, and I'm from Lakeridge High School in
Lake Oswego, Oregon. I became involved with the Temperate Forest
Foundation through my father, Steven, after he spoke with their President
and CEO, Bob Legg. My school has a stewardship project, where the
freshman help out in the community based on a chosen topic. With my
topic being related to the forest industry, I found it very fitting to
help out at the Temperate Forest Foundation. My main project was to
watch a video, called America's Forests; A History of
Resiliency and Recovery, based on the book of the same name
by Douglas MacCleery, and derive the most interesting and
valuable information for this web page.
After viewing the video, America's Forests, by Douglas MacCleery, I discovered that forests are very resilient. The quality of American forests and the success of the policies that were put in place, are mainly due to the varied input and concerns from the public. The result, dramatically improved forest conditions over much of the United States, since 1900.
Then and Now
- The area consumed by wildfire each year has fallen ninety percent. It was between twenty million and fifty million acres in the early 1900's and is between two million and five million acres today.
- Nationally, the average volume of standing timber per acre in United States forests is about thirty percent greater today than in 1952. In the east, the average volume per acre has almost doubled.
- Populations of whitetail deer, wild turkey, elk, pronghorns, and many other wildlife species have also increased dramatically.
- The tens of millions of acres of cutovers or "stumplands" that existed in 1900 have long since been reforested. Many of these areas today are mature forests. Others have been harvested a second time, and the cycle of regeneration to young forests has started again.
- Recreational use of national forests and other public and private forest lands has increased many fold.
- American society in the twentieth century changed from rural and agrarian to urban and industrialized. Although this change has been accompanied by a corresponding physical and psychological separation of people from the land and resources, today's urbanized nation is no less dependent on the products of its forests and fields than were the subsistence farmers of America's past.
Forests are key element in the broad sweep of United States history. The single most important event in the evolution of the modern American landscape was the clearing of forests for agriculture, fuelwood, and building material. People depended heavily on the products of the forest both in their personal lives and in the general economy.
Wood was virtually the only fuel used in this country for most of its history, and people used lumber, timbers, and other structural products as the primary material for building. These wood products were essential to rural economies across the nation, as well as to industry, transportation, and the development of towns and cities. Land cleared of its forests and employed for agricultural use was by far the primary cause of forest loss.
In the spiritual dimension, the forest, and the wildness it represented, also played an important role in the identity of the nation.
There is no question that without its forests, the United States of America would have had a decidedly different history, and would be a decidedly different place than it is today.
AMERICAN FORESTS - A Transformed Heritage
Today our forests represent a substantially transformed legacy - certainly in comparison to 1600. But our forests have also been substantially transformed since 1900, a dimension not commonly understood.
Attitudes about the nation's forests have changed profoundly over the years. Forests were viewed in a spiritual context, but also used with a utilitarian approach in managing forests to serve their own needs. Forests were also initially viewed as a very abundant resource. At first, the forests were used - wildlife, wood products, and land to meet their subsistence needs for food and energy. Later, the abundant wealth of the forests built the homes, cities, and transportation infrastructure of a growing nation. Lands previously occupied by forests were used to feed a rapidly increasing population.
Not more than a century ago, it became increasingly clear that old approaches were not sustainable. Americans began to view forests and wildlife not as products to be mined or foraged, but as resources that could be managed scientifically over the long term, yielding products and services disrupting the basic resource. Recently, the view of the forests has evolved into a view of forests as ecosystems that support a complex web of life, of which humans are a part.
Although it is impossible to predict how the American view of forests may change in the future, the past provides information about how these forests came to be what they are today.
Lessons of the Past and Challenges for the Future
Society remains dependent on forests for a wide variety of economic products. Indeed, on a wood volume basis utilization of the forests for products has never been higher.
Today, the United States consumes about as much wood on a tonnage basis as the total for most other raw materials, such as steel, plastics, aluminum, other metals, and cements, combined. Because of this, society's ability to continue to provide for the entire conservation spectrum, will entirely depend upon how much attention it receives from people like you and me.
As human population increases and demands on natural resources grow, the challenge for society and its land managers is to find ways to realize both commodity products and amenity values from the same area of forest. This increasingly must become the dual focus for the concept of land stewardship and forest sustainability.
The idea behind the history, is that informed choices about the future of our forests and wildlife should be based in part on knowledge of how they came to be what they are today.
Learn more about American Forests in our Eco-Link America's National Forests, Forest Certification II, Global Wood Trends, Anadromous Fish & Pacific Forests, America's Private Forests, Sustainable Forestry, Fire Ecology, Forest Landscapes - or the Video America's Forests: A History of Resiliency and Recovery
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Preservation
In recent years "preservation" has come to mean putting a glass bubble over a forest, particularly an "old growth" forest in hopes that it will stay the same forever. Those who realize that forests are dynamic and undergo constant change consider "preservation" and "preservationist" very negative terms. In forestry, desirable conditions (desirable outcomes) can be replicated again and again, but the forest cannot be preserved in any one state. It is hard for humans to see the forest as more than a snapshot, frozen in time. However, all forests are dynamic ecosystems, dominated by trees. To practice sustainable forestry, foresters must get into sync with these dynamics. This is not to say that we should not set aside some unmanaged forests landscapes as wilderness areas, reserves, etc., for recreational use and as ecological benchmarks. However, these areas are also undergoing constant change and will be impacted by all kinds of disturbances from fire, insects, and disease to wind and water.
There is a much more positive connotation of "preservation" and what a preservationist is all about. Anything that contributes to sustainability is good. Sustainable forestry contributes to sustainable development. Efficient manufacturing contributes to sustainable forestry and sustainable development because we produce with less; less raw material input, less waste, and less pollution. Another overlooked aspect of sustainability is extending the useful life of things we use, particularly building materials which come from raw natural resources. The mark of a mature and sustainable society is to use more durable goods and to extend the life of goods in use. This is as important to sustainability as what kind of ecosystem management regime we use in the forest.
The American wood preserving industry has made tremendous advances in treating wood, particularly pressure treating wood, to extend its useful life. When harvesting of timber was at its peak in the United States we were cutting 15 million acres a year just to produce railroad ties which lasted 5 years or less without preservatives. Huge amounts of wood also went into untreated fences with the same results. The American Wood Preservers Institute (AWPI) points out that: "Wood is a plentiful and economic building material that comes from a renewable resource (trees). However, untreated wood is subject to attack by insects, microorganisms, and fungi. Commercial wood preservation ensures structural soundness and long service life by preventing decay and deterioration of wood."
There are more than 100 million
treated wood utility poles in service today
that will last an average of 30-40 years.
Treated wood has a very positive effect on the economy. The US Forest Service calculates that a treated wooden bridge is 30% less expensive than a concrete or steel bridge, and lasts about three times as long. More than 550 million cubic feet of lumber and industrial wood products are treated annually. Treated wood accounts for approximately 21.5% of the forest product industries total value of annual shipments. The AWPI calculates that without treated wood the added costs to America’s transportation, construction and utility industries would exceed $15 billion per year. More than 10,000 people are directly employed in wood treating plants.
Wood preservatives and treated wood products have undergone extensive scrutiny by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ensure product safety and environmental integrity.
Summary
Treated wood products compliment the natural environment, conserve forest resources, conserve energy, can be recycled, and can save consumers time and money.
As a true preservationist, one should look hard at treated wood products along with naturally rot resistant woods such as redwood and cedar, and durable composites that effectively utilize wood waste and other materials.
Learn more about Preservation in our Eco-Link Sustainable Forestry or Forest Landscapes
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Information
Information has joined space, energy, materials, air and water as a sixth critical resource. Information is unique in its capacity to generate itself. Information is the solar energy of organization, inexhaustible, with new progeny emerging every time it meets up with itself. As long as there are senders and receivers, linked together in context, fertility abounds. All that is needed is circulation to generate new births.
It is really information that gives form to matter. When you look at a forest you see matter in the form of trees. There was information in the seeds that already determined what those trees would look like and what their properties would be. Beyond that, a forest responds to information. As an example, if there is a lot of fire in an ecosystem it tells the trees to develop thick bark. The fire is information to the forest. Think of what the word information means, it means putting things in formation.
For a forest ecosystem to remain alive, or for the universe to move onward, information must be continually generated. The fuel of life is new information ordered into new structures. We need to have information coursing through our systems, disturbing the peace, imbuing everything it touches with new life.
Information technology is being used to help us achieve sustainable forestry and sustainable development. In the woods foresters used geographic information systems (GIS). Using GIS foresters can keep track of layers of data on topography, vegetation, soils, streams, roads, wildlife, recreation and more across vast landscapes. We are actually using digital information (computers) to manage genetic information (trees). The forester has to understand both. GIS is called a monitoring program. However there are also powerful modeling programs which allow foresters to play "what if" games to better predict the long term outcomes of management decisions. Between the monitoring and modeling programs, foresters can look out over large landscapes and long time frames. Large scale ecosystem management would be impossible without the ability to gather analyze and utilize massive amounts of complex information.
Information technology is also being used in mills to produce more from less; less raw material input, less waste and less pollution. Logs and lumber are laser and optically scanned to optimize the yield, grade and production. Information technology is used to produce engineered wood products which make effective use of smaller and lower quality trees to produce excellent building materials. Information technology is also used to design buildings which are energy efficient.
Ecology and economy are two sides of the same coin. Information technology has become critical to managing both. Information technology will help us integrate our interdependent needs for a strong economy supported by a healthy environment. Whether in the office (economy) or the forest (ecology), we need some chaos in the ecosystem. A system without disturbance becomes stagnant. We have learned that a lot of lower level disturbances (chaos) are good and can head of large catastrophic events.
Finally we are now fully into the Information Age and very exciting things are happening. We are communicating at the speed of light. We have computers that can do trillions of calculations per second. The genetic code (DNA) which drives nature is coming together with the binary code (01000001) which drives computers. In laboratories around the world, masses of information written in human DNA are being translated into the precise zeros and ones of computer code. Information technology gives us hope in finding solution to sustaining ourselves and our quality of life on this planet.
Form outlasts matter. Think about it. Although we humans experience ourselves as a stable form, our body changes frequently. Our skin is new every month, our liver every six weeks, and even our brain changes its content of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen about every twelve months. In spite of this exchange we remain rather constant because of the organizing function of the information contained in our DNA. Think about it, information gives form to matter because it means putting things in formation. This is exciting stuff!
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