[NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry

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Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 12:09:56 -0400
From: Nicholas Hill <fernhillns@gmail.com>
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Dear All...here I go deep into the wormhole but come back out to what
started this thread..Nova Scotian forests and biomass

That charcoal was robbing England of its forest in the 18th Century was
general knowledge when I grew up but it was undermined by Hammersley (The
Charcoal Industry and its Fuel 1540-1750, in Economic History Review 26:
593-613) and Hamersley's account is now taken into to Wiki as general
knowledge.

The Hammersley paper is rigorous and it show that as David said, coppicing
was a main method and at any one time, there was twice as much coppiced
land as the total wood requirement of the industry (22,000 acres wood..the
industry pulled ca 60 million cubic feet wood /yr). While that might only
provide two years of wood, the crown land portion of England could in
Hammersely's analysis cover all the needs of the industry for ever. The
crown land in this case was a fraction of the total forested land avaliable.
The argument that Darby's invention was needed to bail a wood starved
industry out is not tenable Hammersley writes and Darby's invention made a
more efficient process, no woods work and wood hauling, and a better formed
product from coal coke.

But..England has among the lowest forested cover in Europe and that in part
sustained that former argument that its industry was responsible.
(Hammersley first page).

I read over Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape 1955 Pelican, and
the whole history of forest loss is in here and not so curiously now, there
is no reference to charcoal. He outlines towns and their enlargement,
farming, mining, early enclosures around forest areas near villages..Devon
hedges were made using 4 foot wide trench by 4 foot wide thrown up into
hedge and planted with hawthorne and these treed areas near villages would
be converted to field for grazing etc..open field system of grazed land
with common areas, enclosure of that...water mills and canals making new
settlements where there was water, finally steam power and the industrial
revolution took industry to original towns near coal where the village
would be redeveloped, so that the wet areas previously unfavoured for
settlement would have a canal dug, factories established and workers
housing established in former wetland areas. These were called slums he
says after "slams" , a low German/Swedish word meaning wet mire (passing
through "slump" then to slum).


Wormholes

Back to the issue at hand:

Our present use of forests in NS needs a better plan to preserve our
natural history and we need a plan that takes into account that our forest
soils have a naturally low calcium concentration,and that soil calcium
levels have been reduced by acidification which is ongoing albeit at lower
rates, that our forestry is taking calcium out of the landscape as bark and
branches leaves the sites, and that we face a climatic shift which should
usher in a diversity of the Appalachian Deciduous Forest species but this
biodiversity shift may not take place in NS if our soils are unfit for
species that come from higher calcium ecosystems.

We need to look at our forested floodplains for here are the calcium
conditions that can sustain the Appalachian Forest. These can be the
starting nuclei for this communty and then good stewardship can enlarge
these areas so they coalesce into migration pathways.

And to Jamie's point that overall, a biomass burning based forestry is
going to degrade all our forest types and that the lowest calcium forests
along the Atlantic shore..the meguma terrane..will be walloped by any short
rotation foreestry and will in some areas transform forest into a savannah
in a matrix of ericaeous scrub.

Nick

,

On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 8:03 PM, David & Alison Webster <dwebster@glinx.com>
wrote:

> Hi Nick & All,                        Jan 1, 2016
>     The idea that---"England....was charcoaling most of its forests."  for
> the reduction of iron and the use of coke prevented widespread
> deforestation is a widespread myth but is at variance with the facts.
>     The large ironworks which developed for volume production, e.g.
> casting of large cannon were not at all portable so they had to rely on
> nearby forests and take care to not deplete them, as outlined below
> From: http://www.ukagriculture.com/countryside/charcoal_history.cfm
>
> "Although historians have often considered that the excessive felling of
> timber to fuel the iron industries resulted in woodland loss, it is now
> recognised that this theory is wholly incorrect. The iron industry was long
> term in nature and iron works jealously guarded their supplies.
> Furthermore, most of the timber used in the charcoal kiln was of coppice
> origin. Coppice material was of regular size, was easy to handle and load
> and required minimal recutting. Woods close to the iron works survived
> because their place as fuel providers to the iron industry raised their
> economic importance and prevented their loss to agriculture as happened
> elsewhere."
>
>     The above is in substantial agreement with information from Edlin
> which I posted a while ago; it being--
>
>     As covered in some detail in Trees, Woods and Man, H.L.Edlin, 1956,
> 272
> pp. most deforestation was a gradual consequence of other practices such
> as
> mowing natural hay or bedding in relatively open woodland and the teeth of
> domesticated animals which killed any regeneration. Without regeneration
> the
> forest gradually died out. This information is scattered & I will not
> attempt to dig it out.
>     But can quote from the passage which relates to charcoal (p. 88) "Vast
> quantities of wood were consumed for charcoal. to "reduce" the iron ores
> to
> metal before the use of coke was understood (Straker, 1931). But it was
> cut
> from coppices of broadleaved trees, which sent up fresh shoots from their
> stumps within a year of being felled; and these coppices were managed by
> men
> who knew the elements of rotational cutting. So today in the very region
> where devastation might otherwise have been greatest, we find the only
> large
> portion of England with an outstandingly high proportion of woodland; in
> the
> five south-eastern counties of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, and
> Hampshire 14.6 per cent of the land as against 5.8 per cent for England as
> a
> whole."
>
> Yt, Dave Webster, Kentville
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Nicholas Hill <fernhillns@gmail.com>
> *To:* naturens@chebucto.ns.ca
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 23, 2015 4:32 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry
>
> A friend recently accused me of being "gnomic", and ill-educated lout as i
> am, i took issue at being called a gnome, but moving int