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