The Lost Forests of New England - Eastern Old Growth

[Music] 14,000 years ago the glacier that had buried New England under thousands of feet of ice for thousands of years receded forests did not survive under the glacier but now could become reestablished across the land the first European settlers arriving in the early 1600s found coastal forests of pitch pine and oak as they moved inland along major rivers they found primeval forest with trees that could withstand seasonal flooding such as silver maples there were bass woods and ashes cottonwoods and American elms grand ghostly sycamores and gnarly old willows they found trees of all sizes from seedlings to aging martyrs as the early settlers continued traveling the waterways to the uplands they discovered great hardwood forests of white ash sugar and red maples beech Oaks yellow black and paper birches massive hickories American chestnuts and there were shady groves of magnificent ancient hemlocks in deep soils of fertile river valleys the eastern white pine rose tall and straight out of the ancient forests it towered above all others dense Woodlands with trees big and small young and old this was the primeval forests of New England or was it accounts from the early 1600s indicate that Native Americans regularly burned the understory of the coastal pitch pine forests and in the river bottoms where native populations were high there's more evidence that they burned the understory producing open park-like forests to encourage the growth of berry producing plants to make travel and hunting with bow and arrow easier burning would tend to favour not producing trees such as Oaks chestnuts and hickories whose thick bark could withstand the heat of fires there is the belief by many people that that even if native people didn't actively clear the land that they may have been using fire in more subtle ways within the forest to manage for a species composition and structure so for species there may have been an interest in encouraging nut bearing species like Oaks and hickories which would have produced food both for people and for a lot of Wildlife the notion that people were managing for particular species of tree is a great hypothesis that we would love to test but it's just terribly difficult to find the evidence to either accept or to reject it so we know that some of the forest was likely manipulated by natives but that probably only occurred along the coast and in River bottoms it's doubtful that higher elevation forests were burned and therefore were likely in their natural condition before settlers arrived settlers began the back-breaking work of clearing forest land for homesteads and small farms oxen and horse thieves were often used to do the heavy hauling over the next century the frontier forests slowly began to fall in front of ax-wielding men clearing pastures hay fields and crop fields for they're self-sufficient way of life in the 1650s the lofty white pine started coming down in numbers to be made into ship masts for the British Navy three and a half decades later a new law declared that all white pines 24 inches or more in diameter were reserved for the Kings Navy the pine had great value to the colonists or construction and furniture so the law was despised and ignored by many who took the trees down in spite of the Kings Proclamation the issue of who owned these Pines was a factor leading up to the Revolutionary War around 1810 the pace of deforestation would skyrocket in central New England one of the really big impacts on the forests of central New England was sheep fever and sheep fever was a fairly short period it went from about 1810 to about 1845 the fever was a wool growing mania that spread through this region is this first sort of market farming opportunity and there are three things that brought it about the first Napoleon going to war against Spain the Spanish had developed a special breed of sheep called the merino and the merino not only made a very ample fleece but it made a wool that made woolen textiles that were not scratchy at all they literally exported the wool around the world but they had an embargo on the Sheep itself they didn't want anyone to get a hold of that breed and become a competitor with the war they couldn't enforce the embargo and our ambassador to Portugal the time in 1810 was William Jarvis and he was able to smuggle 4,000 merino sheep out of Spain through Portugal to bring him back on his form on farm two years after that the war of 1812 put tariffs on all imported wool ins giving anyone who could make wool and share market advantage and then two years after that in 1814 the power loom was invented in those three things kicked off sheep fever and with the water power coming out of these central New England hills it vaulted this region become really one of the major woolen textiles in the world now to give an idea how dramatic the landscape changes are that come with sheep fever in 1810 when jarvis brings over his first 4,000 Reno's only about 20% of the central New England landscape below 2,000 feet is open agricultural land but in the next 35 years as those 4,000 merino sheep swell to six million the landscape becomes almost 80% deforested below two thousand feet in this region the bulk of it and pastures for sheep so over half the area of Central New England was clear-cut to make way for sheep pasture it was a dramatic dramatic imprint that's been left with all the stone fences we see in central doing you in today in a mere three and a half decades the New England Sheep craze had gone bust you vast primeval forests had nearly completely fallen - hand tools and a few draft animals then in the mid-1800s farmers began to give up on their stony New England soil and headed west to the Ohio River Valley by nature's whim much of that open abandoned land seated in with white pine in about 60 years in the early 1900s those trees had grown enough for the timber industry to take another run at logging the white pine that was an opportunity for hardwood trees to replace much of that second growth pine one of the important consequences of that pattern of of land clearance is I think that it strongly skews our understanding of old-growth forests right because so much of the truly productive land melanda probably would have grown some of the biggest trees and magnificent old-growth forests was also the most desirable for agriculture so these would be bottom lands these would be gentle slopes with deep soils those were all cleared but the forests that were left were not left alone and so they were cut and especially in the 19th century into the early 20th century cut incredibly intensively so that few areas of true old-growth remained in to the 20th century [Music] many abandoned farms fields and pastures have reverted to forests in New England but today's woodlands are not old-growth most have been repeatedly cut to different degrees privately-owned forests tend to be harvested more often than publicly owned lands and are generally less than about 70 years old whereas state-owned maybe up to 120 years old over 40 years ago when there was little thought of seeing truly old forests in the Bay State a newcomer to Western Massachusetts began finding what he recognized as old growth characteristics his name is Bob Leverett and his discoveries have surprised a lot of people sometimes been asked how did I get started in hunting older forests in Massachusetts and it goes back into the middle 1970s my son Rob and I were out actually looking for big white pines and we started seeing places that just had a much older look and that started the whole ball rolling my son and I walked into the Coal River old-growth area which had been recognized by the Society of American foresters we stopped into an area then my eyes nearly popped out what I was seeing were characteristics that were common to me that I had grown up with in the Smoky Mountain region where there's a lot of old girls all the components were there I realized at that point in time that we probably had some real bona fide old-growth forests and I realized then that we had seen places that had similar characteristics to that elsewhere in the state forests of Massachusetts came a point when I thought that I needed to find out whether what we were thinking was old go for SWA's and I wrote an article published I think it was April 1988 and after that my phone started ringing off the hook I teamed up with some scientists friends at Harvard Forest Research Center and a couple people from University of Massachusetts and Mass Audubon dr. Peter Dunwoody notably and we started exploring these old-growth patches that I thought I was identifying and that's where the formal studies began I think it was about 1985 when I first got a call from Bob Leverett asking me to come out to Western Massachusetts to take a look at what he thought was old growth and some big trees my first reaction was it well that's kind of strange Massachusetts been inhabited by Europeans cutting down trees for over 300 years and it was hard for me to believe that there was still any old-growth left to be found but bob was a hard person to say no to his enthusiasm was pretty infectious so off I went through the Berkshires I took me around to a number of sites in the Berkshires and right away I knew he was onto something there were just stands of trees that just didn't look like anything else that I'd seen and based on a little experience I had with old-growth and other parts in the United States there seemed to be something pretty unusual about these trees we confirmed this with some cores that we took and sure enough there were stamps trees that surprisingly were well in excess of 200 years old some of them were really big and some of them were really old and pretty quickly I began to realize that there was a lot out there in the woods that had gone unnoticed it's surprising how all these patches of old growth went unnoticed for so long part of it I suppose was just figuring out what to look for having the right search image sometimes the stands of old hemlock simply aren't all that impressively tall or big around other times the trees were pretty much right there in plain sight but no one had thought to ask that simple question where these guys growing here before the pilgrims set foot on the Massachusetts shore if you don't really think there's something out there in the first place like old-growth forest sometimes it never occurs to you to even ask the question from that early work we did a study for the endangered species program and identified areas of old-growth forests in the midst of finding more and eventually through the efforts of dr. Tony D'Amato at the University of Massachusetts we ended up with about 1,200 acres identified of old-growth forests on both public and private lands in Massachusetts in 2000 I was a summer student working with Dave Warburg at the Harvard forest and as the summer went on he finally opened up his drawer in his desk and showed me these maps that Bob levered had had drawn of potential or growth areas in Western Massachusetts and I was about to leave for grad school out west but he said you know when he finished grad school if they were interested in coming back here you could be the one that works on these old growth areas and so I'm pretty pretty a spontaneous person that's exactly what I did and so in 2002 he started working with those maps that Bob had spent many years developing along with Peter Dunwoody and others across all the old-growth areas in Western Massachusetts we collected over three thousand increment cores from these trees so looking at these old growth areas you know there's a lot of variety in terms of the age structure generally we think of them as uneven-aged though there's a diversity of age classes few very old trees to some middle aged trees to a lot of young age trees and so even though we often think of old-growth as these kind of pristine almost static areas they're very dynamic a lot is happening and disturbance is a very important part of shaping how these look today depending on where you are in Massachusetts 80 to 90 percent of the landscape was in an old-growth forest condition at the time of Europe settlement but generally old growth was really the defining forest condition across Massachusetts today it's one tenth of one percent of Massachusetts forests are old-growth so it's an extremely rare resource so even though Massachusetts has over 60% forest a large proportion of that is highly altered from what it used to be like naturally these forests really tended to have species that could live for a long time things like hemlock that can live to be even 600 years old each as well sugar maple depending on the richness of the site and then sometimes a minor component of white pine most of the remnant old-growth forest is in steep mountainous terrain often is found on rugged sites strewn with large boulders dragged there by the glaciers that is likely what saved these trees from the saw and acts what man would risk breaking his or his draft animals legs up there in those conditions to have this sort of terrain without it we certainly have no old-growth forest remnants left and surprisingly we still occasionally discover previously unrecognized patches of old-growth forests here those that have been founder largely in those places that were both less profitable or productive for other purposes and oftentimes extremely inaccessible so how can we recognize old-growth forests in central New England in an old deciduous forest the canopy is generally dense a continuum of tree ages creates a multi-layered structure a thick blanket of duff carpets the forest floor the dense canopy and Duff layer helps retain moisture creating the conditions for growth of a lush plant community wildflowers and other ground-level plants are often more abundant hobble bush is one of the plants often found in these old forests the moist forest floor in these shaded woods supports luxuriant growth of ferns even the ancient boulders are often capped with Gardens of rock pali ponies and other ferns in addition to the great ages that these old-growth forests have they're also a rich source of biodiversity on the landscape from unique and different wildlife habitats to the bryophytes that are found on the trees and the ground to the insect life that is contained within these forests the centuries have laid down thick beds of mosses and other bryophytes Lycans cover the tree trunks and rocks some of these sites have a tropical jungle feel Moisture loving yellow birches cast their long roots across the damp rocks one of the hallmarks of an Old Forest is the uneven ages of the trees present both the ages and the sizes of the trees vary from one end of the spectrum to another not all large trees are old and not all old trees are large this black birch tree a mere six inches in diameter is already a hundred years old as a young tree ages and grows it's smooth bark is stretched and cracked becoming thicker more scaly and deeply furrowed eventually the bark of the old tree may not resemble its youthful bark at all these second growth red oaks are about a hundred years old at 200 years old they'll look like this and at 300 more like this younger hemlock bark has thin scales at 300 years the bark plates are much thicker and darker so I think people if they were walking through this forest but probably sense visually it looks different than the regular forests they'd start to capture the I think maybe the sizes of trees maybe the coarseness of the bark but there's a lot about these forests that we can't see a lot of us judge let's say the diversity of a forest by what we see above-ground how many different plants how many different types of bird species things like that when in fact the bulk of the biota and the species is down in the ground we're just sort of in our infancy of really understanding these forest soil communities because they're way more complex we understood and there's a myriad of interactions going on there so a lot of the biotic diversity and old-growth force like this is not above ground below ground as well as the bulk of the carbon that we see out here is below ground so this old-growth hemlock here there's a lot of carbon stored in its trunk there's a lot of carbon in the trunks of the trees around us but once one of our forests in this region gets to about 80 years of age half of the carbon is down in the soil and as these forests age more and more of the carbons below ground than above ground so these old-growth forests are really important carbon sinks taking up a lot of carbon and putting it down into the ground where then it can support these incredibly diverse soil communities people walking through this forest should probably have a different feel and maybe not know exactly why one thing if they stepped off trail they would feel it right away the ground is really squishy and that's from all the carbons down here so that's one thing that people can notice right away younger forests don't have the squishy soils of an old-growth forest this is a 50 year old second growth forest the Crown's of these trees are bushy with many twigs these trees have not yet had time to develop heavy limbs in their crowns they have a wispy look contrast those with an old sugar maple that's had time to develop its crown or with this huge state champion black cherry tree these trees don't have the round symmetrical bushy tops of younger trees this is a characteristic of old trees that over the centuries have been pruned back by storms and wind one tree species has a unique relationship with wind it grows in thick swamps amid dense mountain laurel and other shrubs this is the longest-lived deciduous species in the eastern forest when old it has very rugged thick blocky bark this is the king of gnarly crowns storm-battered trees this is the black gum or Tupelo tree these are some of the oldest living trees in New England ring counted to well over 500 years in this swamp they were spared only because their wood had low commercial value and the landowner appreciates their beauty and ecological value some have commented that they almost expect to see dinosaurs roaming this swamp this black gum is a lot more highly evolved as a swamp tree than our other sort of regional swamp trees the reason is that it has a lot of wind related adaptations the worst thing for a swamp tree is to be hit by wind and taken down and so what the black gum does if it gets hit by a gust of wind it's gonna snap off somewhere in its trunk and then it very vigorously buds back out new limbs at that breakage point so this black gum right here if you follow it up you see all these elbows each one represents a breakage point but it remains standing and those wind events would take our other regional swamp trees right down and that's why the black gum can persist here and reach great age because of this adaptation and they naturally hollow out as well making them excellent trees for honeybees they can nest within them very very dramatic trees they have a lot of character this is a younger black gum right here I'm holding on to and this is an old tree but this bark is telling us just how ancient this tree is I mean you know I can stick my hand in there good ways and a lot of these crevices you know this is really really coarse barked shade-tolerant trees like beach sugar maple and hemlock can grow under the shade of their own or other species so they eventually dominate the canopy and it becomes closed excluding non shade tolerant species from the forest strong winds and storms literally shape our forests these pines and hemlocks constantly buffeted by north winds have no limbs on their north sides over time trees will be broken and blown down others will give way to decay the toppling of these trees leaves holes in the once closed canopy now sunlight can penetrate through the gaps to the forest floor sparking new ground-level plant life including new trees these natural breaks in the canopy allow tree species that can't grow and shade to get a foothold in the forest the random distribution of these gaps and the new growth that occurs within them is what makes an old-growth forest a patchwork of uneven aged trees trees on the edges of the gap will expand their crowns into the available light as a result the ragged crowns of individual old trees are noticeable on a mountainside with visible spaces between trees a second growth site looks more smooth and even textured individual trees are not easily discernible here the difference can be clearly seen just as their roots pursue soil nutrients and water tree crowns will seek the sunlight in a canopy gap often resulting in sinuous or contorted growth low downs and other disruptions to the closed canopy provide opportunities for shorter live shade intolerant species to take hold such as white ash bitternutt hickory black cherry paper birch white pine and this bigtooth aspen these species have a proper place in an old-growth forest adding to and benefiting the diversity of all life forms there we identified several areas that were just simply outstanding it sort of fit the archetype ol old-growth image that many people had of big trees tall trees old trees but we also found areas that were not particularly outstanding in those features and so we started to fully appreciate the wide range and complex nature of old-growth forest ecosystems and understand that disturbance plays out in many forms and leaves its imprint in many ways it wasn't just about big trees by being able to focus on old forests the information contained in those trees allows us to examine how those force developed what type of structure occurs over time and we can then compare that with the second growth force and what we find is that the structure is usually quite quite different we have a much more multi-layered canopy and old-growth forests we have a much larger range of diameters in old-growth forests versus second growth forests and we have a lot of other characteristics like staining dead trees and down dead material that's much higher in old-growth forests as compared to our second growth forests fallen trees limbs and leaves decompose over time and build soil recycling their nutrients most hardwood logs rot away and disappear in a few decades like this beach hemlock logs are a little different because of their high tannin content they can persist on the forest floor much longer than most hardwood logs eventually they become blanketed with moss at that point their ideal germination sites for ferns but primarily for small seeded trees such as yellow birch when the tiny seeds of these birches germinate on the forest floor they don't have enough stored energy to put down roots through the leaf and Duff layer so these nurse logs are essential for their survival a wind thrown tree will often pull up a root ball of soil providing one other place for birches to germinate their seeds you know Deadwood is really a unique element of these old-growth forests and a critical functional part of these systems these areas are also really important refuge' for species like like seedlings actually this log right here has a bunch of birch seedlings on it already even during a dry summer day you can easily dig into a log like this essentially squeeze out moisture quite readily and so these logs are really important kind of micro refuge' for organisms so one thing that's really unique about old-growth is by having all this dead wood by having this history of trees toppling over it then also having all these layers in the canopy creates a very unique micro environment and as a result we often find a diversity of plants and fungi small mammals and other organisms taking advantage of all those unique niches that exist throughout that for us this Deadwood really has a critical function in the forest and always has but as we think about environmental change really is something that folks should be paying attention to and these old growth areas provides a unique refugia by having large accumulations for things to rely on large diameter hollow logs serve as hotels restaurants and nurseries to the animal world they are almost non-existent in our modern-day forests old-growth forests may live on indefinitely but not so individual trees eventually they come down and when they do there's a world of decomposers ready to take them apart this hemlock stump is well on its way to becoming soil but it's not done yet a fungus has spread its mycelial threads all through the wood slowly digesting it the fungus will produce mushrooms to spread spores in the meantime the stump is home to rodents slugs amphibians insects and a host of other invertebrates after many decades the wood will be totally digested and returned to the soil not only to fungi decomposed dead plant material they also form a vast underground communication network among most plants and trees and they substantially promote the growth of trees by tapping into water and mineral sources that they passed to the tree's roots in exchange for sugars provided by the trees researchers are finding increasing evidence that the hidden network of fungal mycorrhizae in forest soil is much more important than once realized these fungal networks connect tree and other plant roots together allowing them to pass not only water and nutrients across the network but chemical defense signals as well an insect attack on one tree may be communicated through the network to other nearby trees enabling them to produce defense chemicals in advance of the insects arrival what's more interconnected trees are able to help each other grow and remain alive and healthier than a non connected tree these fungal networks are a vital link within a forest disruption of these networks due to human activity is a setback for the forest which may take many decades or even centuries to recover there is as much or more activity happening out of sight in the Duff layer as there is above ground in the treetops the lady slipper orchid cannot reproduce and survive without a soil fungus to break open its seeds the overall health of a forest is greatly dependent on an intact Duff layer with a vibrant fungal community an integral part of it some of the largest living organisms in the world are now known to be fungus mats covering thousands of acres there are other forces working to take apart Deadwood carpenter ants they don't eat the wood but they excavate nests within it they in turn become food for a variety of animals from woodpeckers to black bears and a hole once excavated by a foraging woodpecker looking for ants is now a germination site for a red maple seed in an old-growth New England setting red maple has a very sparse presence kept in check by competition and the ever-present canopy in a highly disturbed setting such as cleared land red maple can dominate a site reducing diversity in an ancient woodland it's just one of many magnificent forest tree species if there's one tree species that's most emblematic of old-growth forests in New England it's the Eastern hemlock hemlock forest we don't tend to think of as being a very rich forest type having a lot of different species but what we did find when we looked at the understory plants and hemlock that was old-growth compared to hemlock that was a hundred to 110 years old and had developed following harvesting that there was very distinct differences particularly in the abundance of certain species like wild sarsaparilla hobble bush in those old-growth stands relative these second grow stanzas well those aren't necessarily rare species but would have spoke to or there's a greater range of habitats in those sites as well those kind of less intensive land use that allow those who persist and thrive in those areas ironically that hemlock dominance now threatens that one percent of our landscape given that hemlock woolly adelgid is now threatening these areas and if we have hemlock woolly adelgid getting into some of these portions of the landscape will totally change our last remaining old-growth forests across the region until the late 19th century hemlocks were heavily exploited for their bark every town had one or more small tanneries which consumed the bark for its tannin content to be used in tanning leather there was a wasteful practice bark was stripped from standing or felled trees the remains of which were often left to rot in the woods it's a familiar story only the least accessible hemlocks survived today as old-growth hemlocks and boulders seem to be good company for each other it's amazing how a tree perched on bare rock can remain standing sometimes they do need a bit of support we found a hemlock within the Mohawk trail State Forest that was 488 years old which now it's still alive thankfully so it's over 500 years old now what was also interesting is a lot of these hemlock stands there was usually a very old black birch component not very common but certainly a part of that forest that was very commonly over 200 years old we even had some black birch there were over 300 years old which is the dead pine the oldest documented black birch for the eastern forest finding black birches two and three hundred years old was a big surprise but of all the tree species in New England it's the lofty white pine that takes the height records perhaps no one has more expertise in measuring them than Bob Leverett the anecdotal accounts from past writers suggest that white pines could reach heights of 250 feet and maybe diameters up to even 10 feet we today regard these accounts is more or less the equivalent of big fish stories in truths white pines from the past could reach 200 feet but very rarely 180 feet somewhat more commonly and 150 feet quite often a four to five foot diameter was often achieved and that's basically what we find the trend of the biggest trees today reaching yes I think about the tree species in the East perhaps none more so than the great white Pines of New England and the Northeast inspire more they really capture the essence of old growth of great stature of great age of lone giants rising above the canopy of hardwoods and singing out to the world look at us we're here and we're the best of the best winter snows become spring meltwater these old woodlands soak up that water in the spongy Duff layer filtering it to the highest level of purity that nature can provide moderating its flow and eventually releasing it into freerunning mountain streams much of the water is retained creating the high moisture levels that perpetuate the mosses lichens and the entire forest itself the processes that flow through these ancient forests occur on a timescale that we humans don't experience we don't live for centuries rooted in one spot these woodlands have evolved and adapted to the conditions in which they grow in less than one tree's lifespan we have radically altered those conditions and not for the better we all use and need forest products but harvesting a forest must be done with great care and concern for the land because it has negative effects logging a forest results in a simplification of its structure reduces micro habitats and biological diversity and richness drying of the soil can occur along with damage to the all-important Duff layer increased light penetration and bare soils often open the door to non-native invasive species further degrading the forest vines such as this oriental bittersweet thrive in the increased light they climb choke and kill trees Japanese knotweed obliterates everything under its dense foliage thorny multiflora rose must have been sent here by the devil himself glossy buckthorn will completely take over the understory of a forest burning bush or winged euonymus has penetrated many of our woodlands and forms impenetrable thickets and a sea of thorny Japanese Barbary will make you think twice about taking a walk through this woodland thankfully most of our old-growth remnants have not yet been affected by invasive plants but non-native insects and fungi are doing damage in a natural old-growth forest Nature maintains a balance competition prevents any one species from gaining a large advantage over all others giving the forest the adaptability it needs to survive changing conditions over time there's a lot we still don't know about these little growth areas are their unique microbial communities are the unique fungal communities what do we see in terms of differences in temperature and moisture across these forests that might actually help us understand how they may be impacted by climate change what are the genetic makeup of these old trees that have been here for a long time and have proven they can withstand some dramatic fluctuations in climate these trees are still here and persisting so are there things we can learn from those trees one way scientists can learn more about our forests and climate is by extracting small cores from trees allowing them to see and measure the annual growth rings under magnification and so we can see how our tree grew by how wide the ring is or the amount of wood that's put down across the year and here we have a very wide ring wide ring and then we have a very long series of narrow rings that indicates in this case tree damage based on some past disturbance and that's the value of looking at old trees because they are a great recorder of information and past disturbance and so we have a system here that we can then measure these annual growth rings and determine exactly when that disturbance occurred and also how slow it grew and for how long that period of slow growth occurs and we can use that across a variety of different trees to get some indication of the disturbance history of the forest so what can we learn from old-growth forests that maybe we can't from second-growth forest or a hundred year old forest we're here at the Harvard forest right now this is the Wired woods all kinds of research is being done on this forest most of the trees are you know the dominant trees are 110 130 years old we know that these forests are just getting started now at a hundred years people are surprised that the red oaks here are taking up more carbon than they had 25 years ago and this was a surprise to many scientists how the forest works up to this point up to about a hundred and ten hundred fifteen years we actually know this pretty well what happens next how do they change in which directions do they go trees up in this part of the world grow annual rings each year and we can count the rings as yellow the trees are but our science is so much more than that we can look at the patterns of large and small rings through time and we can say that's the 1774 frost event but then there are other patterns in the rings that represent different things we can identify ice storms we can identify gypsy moth defoliation events we can say oh look these trees reduced growth suddenly in this one year for two or three or four years and then slowly recovered but these trees did the opposite tree rings in the eastern United States in the last 40 years or so they've been used to reconstruct climate history to understand how our climate has changed my advisor found a black burst at three hundred sixty years old two summers ago we caught a white ash where they don't even have a maximum age in the civics manual we have one that's over 300 years old and it grew really slow at first and then it accelerated its growth rate over the course of its lifetime as I get older it grew faster then when we go into old-growth forests and we just start coring different species like yellow birch we learn things like they act or they grow differently than the other individual species around them and even other individual yellow birches and so there's just so much more basic natural history that we can learn from old-growth forests using tree rings this is the value of old-growth forests we can't learn this from the forests that have been cut there's something else that comes from our studies of old-growth and that is a recognition of what we're missing in the New England landscape largely what we're missing the most obvious thing that we're missing his structure we're missing commenced trees were missing commenced standing dead trees that provide habitat and shelter for a range of organisms we're missing mounds of dirt and adjoining pits that are created by the windfall of these big trees we get down into swamps and into streams we're missing the effect of these big trees as they dam up the water flow and diversify the habitat of our water bodies ranging from small streams to big rivers ponds and lakes all that's missing and it's missing because our landscapes has been so heavily cut over and so heavily cleared and was so early in the recovery stage of that that the kinds of conditions that you would find in an old-growth forest have been eliminated and have not yet redeveloped given where we are today I sometimes reflect back on where we started and something rather scary the old-growth that we have identified that we collectively want to protect we almost lost that that was not visible on radar scopes and it wasn't visible because we had unrealistic expectations of what old-growth was some of them were highly romantic and some are more very pejorative but we came that close to losing the older forest this precious natural heritage almost didn't make it so in addition to these old-growth forest habitats as being important for other organisms other living things I think they're also important for human beings they remind us of what our very planet can be when we leave it alone there is a soulful beauty in these places perhaps we've cut too many of these forests and we should let some of them recover and become old-growth once again and that's the beauty of the forest ecosystem it can recover if we leave it alone so in order to help speak for these forests to make sure they remain preserved and to allow other forests to recover old-growth characteristics I created an organization called the old-growth forest Network and our vision is to have at least one forest in each county of the US where forests can grow that will be protected from logging and open to the public thinking in terms of old-growth forests across the spectrum of interests and values one that strikes me is very important is its impact invited to the human spirit people who go to these old-growth sites are almost always impressed some are transformed it's clear to me that within our evolutionary path that nature was an absolute base of our understanding and experience and this gives people who grew up far removed from forests a sense of what the majesty of the forest is really all about it has that value along with ecology ecological values and let's say carbon sequestration we can go down a long shopping list but I wouldn't want to underplay its importance to the human spirit [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: New England Forests

Views: 226,293

Rating: 4.8926582 out of 5

Keywords: old growth forest, new england, Bob Leverett, David Foster, Tom Wessels, Tony D'Amato, Peter Dunwiddie, David Orwig, Neil Pederson, Joan Maloof, Harvard Forest, New England Forests, Ray Asselin, Jared Lockwood, old trees, sheep fever, merino sheep, eastern old growth, white pine, king's pines, hemlock, black gum, Mohawk trail, Wachusetts, Greylock, Bryant homestead, Monroe state forest, Big trees, Native tree society, Nurse log, Mycorrhizal fungi

Id: Vi12xaJxA5U

Length: 56min 47sec (3407 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018