***********************************************
WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
United
States Vanishing Forests
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
2/20/96
OVERVIEW
& SOURCE
In
addition to continued industrial forestry and "salvage"
timber
sales (which by some accounts may mean lack of
natural
forests throughout the United States with the
exceptions
of protected lands within 50 years), United
States
forests "are sick and dying, from environmental
pollution
and destructive forestry practices."
The United
States,
once a leader in environmental initiatives and
largely
a wilderness only a few hundred years ago, continues
to move
towards becoming a biological wasteland.
Acid rain
and
other forest disturbances are becoming evident, the
Third
World Networks (TWN) states, in decreased forest
health. The following was written and posted in the
TWN
econet
conference, twn:features.
g.b.
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Written 6:58 PM Feb 16, 1996 by twn in igc:twn.features
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---------- "US:Vanishing Forests" ---------- */
FORESTS
VANISHING IN THE U.S.A.
A new
book gives a detailed picture of how trees all over
the USA
are sick and dying, from environmental pollution and
destructive
forestry practices. The US Forest Service,
meanwhile,
is downplaying the importance of tree disease and
death.
By
Peter Montague
Trees
are sick and dying everywhere in the US. At first
blush
this seems like an extreme statement. But a new book,
The
Dying of the Trees by Charles Little, will convince you
it is
true.
This
book gives a detailed picture of trees sick and dying.
It
seems clear that the dying trees are one more sign of
danger,
one more warning that something is terribly wrong.
Why are
the trees dying? The reasons are many and varied. In
New
England, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia,
Ohio,
Indiana and Kentucky, it's a combination of acid rain
and
clear-cuts; in California it's killer smog; in Arizona
and New
Mexico and elsewhere, it's excessive ultraviolet
light
filtering through the earth's damaged ozone shield;
other
places, it's pesticides, or toxic heavy metals
released
by burning coal and oil; in Alaska and Florida it's
rising
temperatures and rising sea levels from global
warming;
in Colorado, Oregon and Washington state it's
destructive
forestry practices that leave forests weakened,
unable
to withstand extremes of weather or attacks by
insects
or fungi.
In most
places, it's probably combinations of all these
factors.
Scientists are playing catch-up now, conducting
studies
that may explain the complicated causes of
widespread
tree death.
Answers
come slowly. Hubert `Hub' Vogelmann, a botanist at
the
University of Vermont, wanted to study an undisturbed
forest,
so in 1965 he made a thorough survey of Camel's
Hump, a
1,245-metre peak in the Green Mountains. So far as
he
knew, he was describing a healthy ecosystem. He measured
the
types and sizes of the trees, and various other aspects
of the
ecosystem. He had no particular purpose in mind,
other
than to gather knowledge about nature.
Periodically,
he re-surveyed Camel's Hump, and a pattern
began
to emerge. The trees were dying. His survey in 1979,
compared
to the baseline study of 1965, showed a 48% loss of
red
spruce; a 73% loss of mountain maple; a 49% loss of
striped
maple, and a 35% loss of sugar maple.
Vogelmann
was able to show that the health of Camel's Hump
had
begun to decline in the period 1950-1960. Similar
studies
in the Black Forest of Germany, and in southern
Canada,
revealed that the most likely cause was acid rain.
Acid
rain occurs when coal and oil are burned, releasing
sulfur
which combines with rain (or fog or snow) to make
acid
precipitation. Acidity is measured in units called pH.
Pure
water has a pH of 7 -- it is `neutral' -- neither
acidic
nor alkaline. Pure rainwater has a pH of 5.6 --
slightly
acidic because, while in the air, rain absorbs
carbon
dioxide to form a weak solution of carbonic acid.
After
World War II the US saw a massive rise in use of
fossil
fuels, coal and oil. The resulting smoke was obvious,
and
obviously harmful; in Donora, Pennsylvania, in 1948,
half
the people in the town fell ill for three days because
of coal
smoke in the air. Twenty people died. In London in
1952,
coal smoke killed 4,000 people during a pollution
episode.
The
official response in the 1950s was to build smokestacks
hundreds
of metres tall, to dilute the pollution. Today the
Ohio
River valley is still dotted by enormous coal-burning
power
plants with stacks as high as 200 or even 300 metres.
These
tall stacks allow the sulfurous pollution to travel
1,500
km or more, where it forms acid rain across the
Adirondack
Mountains of New York, and across northern New
England
and southern Canada.
In
Vermont, the rain has a pH of 3.8 to 4.0. The pH scale is
`logarithmic'
so a change from normal (5.6) down to 4.6
means
the rain has gotten 10 times as acidic; at 3.6 the
rain is
100 times as acidic as normal.
It
wasn't until 1972 that Eugene Likens (then at Cornell
University)
and F Herbert Bormann at Yale discovered acid
rain.
But meanwhile acid rain had been falling on northern
New
York and New England, and on southern Canada for about
20
years.
What
Vogelmann has been able to show by studying Camel's
Hump for
30 years is that acid rain doesn't affect just the
trees;
it affects the soil and thus the entire ecosystem.
Soil
contains a large amount of aluminium, but it occurs in
the
form of aluminium silicates; in that form, aluminium is
not
available to the roots of plants. But acid rain
dissolves
the silicates, releasing the aluminium and making
it
available to plants.
When
plants get aluminium into their roots and their
vascular
system, the roots clog, which prevents the plant
from
taking up adequate nutrients and water. The trees are
weakened,
and may then fall prey to extreme cold, or to
insects
or pathogens.
Acid
rain not only releases aluminium. It also releases
other
minerals -- calcium, magnesium, phosphorus -- which
are
fertiliser for the tree. Acid rain releases these
fertilisers
to be washed out of the soil, leaving the soil
depleted
of nutrients. That is not the end of
the problem.
The
roots of many trees create a symbiotic relationship
with an
orange-coloured sponge-like fungus called
mycorrhiza.
The tree roots provide sustenance to the
mycorrhiza,
and the mycorrhiza helps the tree roots gather
water
and nutrients from the soil. But acid rain kills
mycorrhiza,
thus further reducing the ability of trees to
absorb
water and nutrients.
Acid
rain also kills off portions of the detritus food
chain.
The detritus food chain is all the microscopic
creatures
that `compost' leaves, twigs, pine needles, dead
branches
and so forth, turning them back into soil. Because
the
detritus food chain is damaged by acid rain, forest
`litter'
builds up on the floor of the forest. The litter
prevents
new saplings from taking root -- they cannot reach
through
the litter to make contact with the soil below.
Furthermore,
the litter promotes the growth of ferns, which
give
off substances that inhibit the growth of red spruce
saplings,
among others.
This is
not a complete description of problems caused by
acid
rain, but it gives a sense of complexity of ecosystems
and how
they can become unbalanced by thoughtless human
intrusions.
Given
the high rates of tree death and the widespread nature
of the
problem, one would think that the community of
botanists,
forest ecosystem specialists and US Forest
Service
employees would be up in arms, advocating change.
But one
would be disappointed.
Throughout
the book, Charles Little describes studies and
statements
by the US Forest Service downplaying the
importance
of tree disease and death. For example, in 1991
the
Procter Maple Research Centre at the University of
Vermont
pinpointed acid rain and other air pollution as an
important
cause of decline of sugar maples in Vermont.
`We
think we are looking at the early stages of an epidemic
problem,'
the centre's report said. The following year the
US
Forest Service issued a report saying that 90% of the
sugar
maples surveyed were healthy and the overall numbers
and
volume of sugar maples were increasing.
It
turned out the Forest Service had used a tricky way of
counting
dead trees; only the standing dead were counted --
those
lying on the ground were not.
Forest-protection
activists in the Pacific north-west have
long
considered the Forest Service a rogue agency, captured
by the
forest products industry. Under the Reagan and Bush
administrations,
the situation grew so extreme that when
Jack
Ward Thomas took over the leadership of the Forest
Service
in 1992, he immediately issued six `messages' to
personnel
throughout the agency. The first three messages
were:
(1) Obey the law; (2) Tell the truth;
(3) Implement
ecosystem
management. That such orders had to be issued
speaks
volumes about the past performance of this federal
agency.
In 1993
there was evidence of new candour in the Forest
Service.
A report issued that year said timber mortality, on
a
volume basis, had increased 24% between 1986 and 1991, `in
all
regions, on all ownerships, and for both hardwoods and
softwoods'.
Hardwoods were particularly affected, and
particularly
in the south, where the mortality increase was
37%. -
Third World Network Features
About
the writer: Peter Montague, PhD, is director of the
Environmental
Research Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland,
USA.
When
reproducing this feature, please credit Third World
Network
Features and (if applicable) the cooperating
magazine
or agency involved in the article, and give the
byline.
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