Cronon: Chapter 6, Taking the Forest ISS 310 People and Environment Prof. Alan Rudy 1-29-02 1. Main Points?

Taking the Forest Back to Ecology Who are the players in this chapter? What has changed on that front from previous chapters?

TIMBERRRRR!!!! Timber/forests were “naturally” unimproved, “free” for the taking, part of “the commons.” Ownership came with felling trees and sawing logs. White Oak - ship timbers/planks, barrel staves. Black Oak - underwater ship timbers Cedar/Chestnuts -- outdoor construction White Pine -- ship masts (nothing like it in the UK) England’s merchant marine and navy had depended on European stocks of wood, NE a major liberator from dependence on Continental competitors

English Colonial Conservationism?? Massachusetts’ second charter no unauthorized cutting of big trees Additional royal restrictions such trees marked and more protected Unable to enforce the laws….

New England Conservationism? II Big trees, scattered, extracted very wastefully Saving labor rather than trees Heck there’s an unlimited supply anyway, right?! Other trees used as cushions for desirable big trees Abundance leads to high standards re: quality – leads to more waste

Consequences No trees, basically at all, on Atlantic and Caribbean Islands INTRACOLONIAL TRADE DRIVES DEFORESTATION Deforestation leads to a price/value increase due to socially produced “scarcity” Ever greater transport costs as big trees recede from shoreline and rivers-edges

Consequences II ALSO: Cedars disappear from swamps Useful trees of decent size disappear Nut trees become more scarce European misinterpretation of small tree size resulting from bad soils, not historical action AGAIN: Nature’s the problem and society missing!!

Responsibility (w/o blame) Farmers cleared more land than did foresters Farmer correlated trees and good soils Hickories, maples, ashes and beeches produce rich humus Oaks generate thinner soils Coniferous, acidic soils ever worse. Scrubby bushes ever worse

Consequences III Wait a minute -- soils and trees produce one another not one produces the other correlation does not equal causation, it equals co-relation, evolving mutual causation Root systems, evapotranspiration, fire, soil chemistry all key to ecosystem reproduction

Ag Clearing Techniques Girdling wasteful, but soils get tree nutrients dangerous and ugly Late Summer Felling/Spring Burning wasteful, soils lose humus, get ashes Maize, rye, grain, pasture annual planting

Ag Clearing Techniques II Lumbering and potash production and sales wealth, tools, labor supply necessary for these simple commodities Newly cleared lands over-valued (short-term) Indians burned undergrowth (usufruct), colonists burned forests (ownership) WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Sawmills and Labor Sawmills = settlement nuclei lumber for ships, churches, houses, barns, outbuildings roads converged at mills, on rivers Rivers drove grain and wood mills WHY? Shortage and high cost of skilled labor. Low productivity anyway - used best lumber only as a result.

Interpretation AGAIN: low population leads to greater ecodamage because of wastefulness of market/settlement w/ insufficient labor In what ways might you see Michigan’s environment suffering because of low population levels in some areas?

Construction and Use Timber + Stone houses give way to timber only Thatch/slate roofs give way to wood shingles House sizes can be larger since lighter Fences initially, and wastefully, wood not stone

Other Uses BIGGEST USE, however, was for fuel typical household = 30-40 cords of fuel wood 4X4X300 feet = an acre of wood/year Large land-owners had woodlots, small land-owners had to buy wood brought in… class analysis. Smaller farms  did more ecodamage?

What This Meant for the Weather Little climactic change: wind, clouds, rainfall However: warming and drying soils more extremes: hotter summers, colder winters cool soils in forests used to: reduce temp extremes reduce wind 20-60 percent more susceptible to fires and floods

What this means for soils if soils froze more deeply, water cycles disrupted spring floods came earlier, w/ greater top-soil loss increased, earlier flow rates = less recharge springs, ponds, rivers dry up in some places other areas flooded -- less evapotranspiration

Conclusion All this undermined wood and grain mills!!! Too much water, flooding in the spring Not enough water, drought the rest of the time. NOT seen as deforestation but as civilization, progress

Concluding Quote “Reducing the forest was an essential first step toward reproducing the Old World mosaic in an American environment. For the New England landscape and for the Indians, what followed was a new ecological order; for the colonists, on the other hand, it was an old and familiar way of life.” (126) ONE OF PRODUCED SCARCITY NOT NATURAL SCARCITY