Focus 580; Forests in Time: the Environmental Consequences of 1,000 Years of Change in New England

In this our focus 580 will be spending some time talking a bit about forests and forest ecology and taking as our case study the forests of the northeast. Back when Henry David Thoreau was rambling around New England in the 19th century he wrote a lot about the region's natural beauty. One thing he lamented was the lack of woodlands and the wildlife that went with them. He and others believed that a New England's forests would never recover from the kind of broad and deep cutting that had been done as it had been settled and turned in farmland Today however things are very different in fact New England is one of the most heavily forested regions in the United States. Many things have acted upon the forests of New England over the last millennium or so. Some powerful weather in addition diseases and insects and of course human beings. All of these things help to make the forest the place that it is today and scientists say that if we're going to understand today's environment when we have to understand the history what's

gone before that is true for the forests of the northeast and I'm sure it's also true for the prairie and just about any place else for that matter for about a century now scientists at Harvard have been studying forest ecology using as their laboratory a little plot of some 3000 acres known as the Harvard Forest. And this morning in this part of the show we will be talking with the director the current director of the Harvard Forest. His name is David Foster. He is also the principal investigator of the the long term ecological research program there at Harvard. It's one of 25 National Centers for U.K. logical research that's funded by the National Science Foundation. He's also one of the contributors to a book that has recently been published it's titled forests and time the environmental consequences of 1000 years of change in New England and it's published by the Yale University Press. He's joining us this morning to be with us in this hour of focus 580 And as we talk of course questions are welcome to 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free

800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 Those are the numbers. Well Mr. Foster. Hello. Good morning thanks very much for talking with us. It's great to be here is it. So how how is it that you're get your Harvard book gets published by Yale something something's odd about that. Well no I mean we've published in various venues and Yale was prepared to do a good job with it right. Well I appreciate you you giving us some of your time. Tell us about the Harvard Forest. So as you say the Harvard Forest is a 3000 acres out in central Massachusetts and the forested in very rural part of Massachusetts. It is a research and educational institute established by the University of around the turn of the century almost a hundred years ago and it's been focused on environmental studies which has lent

itself to becoming one of the longest long term records of environmental change and forest development in the United States. Broadly speaking how have things there changed over time. And I guess the one obvious thing just to me from the from the cursory looking over the year in the book is that. There was a big change over this period of time that that Europeans have been in the region that initially caused an awful lot of trees to be cut down. And that's leads us to that observation that the role made. But then we do see a period of recovery and something like maybe a hundred years after through all the forests where back now they might have been different. But maybe you can talk about what what has happened with sort of a thumbnail sketch of what's happened over all say over the last maybe few hundred years. Sure.

Well broadly the front here of the United States that is the European frontier of the United States has continued to move westward initially knowing that it was the front here and it was the focus of extensive deforestation by people who are interested in living off the land. So these were Europeans largely from Britain to begin with who wanted to clear the forest to create a landscape that was reminiscent of the British Isles. They cut down the forests they burned up the residual material they planted the land and then grazed it very extensively. And by and large I thought that they would. They and their ancestors would be on that land forever. But of course the frontier moved further west and as it did opportunities other agricultural opportunities arose and so

agriculture and transportation led to a transformation in the economy of the United States which undercut the farming potential of New England. When that happened and that was coincident with Henry Thoreau's life people started moving westward to farm and they started moving inward into urban settings in the East Coast. By and large abandoning their agricultural lifestyles in New England that led to a widespread 100 year period when the New England landscape went from farmland back into forest. And that's what's given rise to this really remarkable expanse of forest land that we have today. When you look at the various species that make up the forest today and what you know about what had been there before

before Europeans came in and there was a lot of cutting to converted to agricultural land. How are those two forests different because I would imagine that that what was there a thousand years ago. Was different from what's there today. Or or are they that different. You know it depends very much on your perspective. In a broad way. It's remarkable that we have the same mixture of species the same abundance of relative abundance of native species and very few for example non-native invasive tree species. On the other hand when you look at it closely which is what we do as ecologists the numbers are different. The relative abundance of for example the old growth species the Long

live mature for a species they've dropped considerably and the landscape is by and large more heavily populated with species which are opportunists which take advantage of the amount of disturbance that we've we've had in the landscape over the last few hundred years. And so there are numbers numbers of increase. So it depends very much on on your perspective overall from a distance the landscape is very similar to to what it would have been many hundred years ago that you could certainly understand that since we're only talking about a century things that would take much longer than that to reach full maturity wouldn't be there anymore but I guess I am a little bit surprised that you don't have a greater problem with non-native. Things things that would take advantage of the fact that there wasn't a

niche there to get into and that you wouldn't have a real problem particularly with things that are really those things that are really none native native and very invasive that you do. Obviously you do see it elsewhere around the United States. You certainly see it in the Midwest. Yeah. And and that's a very good point. I guess what I do is two things. One we certainly have had the invasion if you will of non-native insects and pathogens which have actually caused the decline and in some cases the near removal of some species chestnut is a notable example. Elm is another example although it wasn't anywhere near as abundant as chestnut was. We currently now have an Asian insect which is killing off our hemlock trees so there have been some declines as a result of the impacts of non-native insects and and pass and pathogens.

I think New England is fortunate in the fact that all of this history that we're talking about this reforestation occurred relatively early and really did start in the 1850s and much of it transpired before the turn of the 20th century. And as a result the number an abundance of invasive plant species was relatively small and people have conjectured as to what would have happened if for example New England were abandoned from agriculture today with a large number of invasive plant species that we have and we might actually get a very different story. So again it's a it's a matter of history playing out. And some of the vagaries of the history. Making a lot of difference in terms of what we actually get as an outcome I would imagine that today if you had a region that had been at one time heavily forested and then there had been a lot of cutting and it had been

converted to agricultural land and then you decided that you were going to try to restore what it was that a lot of wildlife experts and biologists and ecologists and plant people would least give some thought to how to how to help that process along. And I would consider it probably appropriate maybe to do a little bit of grooming in the way that 100 years ago it would that would never happen. It was just left. And Nature did its thing and I guess I'm. I'm interested in. How is that. If not we were going to do it Nell would say. Would science be applied and how would science be applied. Because I'm sure that it wouldn't if such a thing was going to be taken as a project. It wouldn't just be left alone. And maybe I think maybe the outcome wouldn't be all that desirable even if you. I mean if you did just live well maybe

we wouldn't all be all that happy with what would what you would get actually. Yeah I think that's a very good point. Last week I was interviewed by a BBC program that was interested in examining what would happen to the British Isles and Northwestern Europe if some of the plans by the European Commission were to unfold which would result in major reforestation of a lot of agricultural land in Europe and they want to know what what lessons there were from New England and one of the obvious differences between what would happen today in Europe and what happened a hundred fifty years ago in New England is that today is that word to unfold in Britain or Europe. It certainly wouldn't be a haphazard process that people ignored. It would be something that people would manage. In contrast in New England this was a process in which people were leaving the

land and they weren't looking back over their shoulders. And so it unfolded just in the way that the biology and the nature of the individual species in the landscape dictated. There was very very little intervention by people. And so I think you're absolutely right. If we were to have a similar process in eastern US today we'd try to bring all of our expertise and management skills to nudging it in different directions as we as we tend to do. That wasn't the case a century and a half ago. So actually when you look at how things turned out it sounds like in spite of absence of nudging things turned out pretty well at least in this particular case but it sounds like you can't generalize from that to what would happen today if this if you designed a similar sort of experiment. You know what the scale is is really difficult to grasp I mean this was certainly a process that unfolded in New England but it's it's broadly

characteristic of the entire eastern United States. If you go to North Carolina go to Raleigh Durham and watch walk around the landscape of the Duke forest for example with its director. He will tell a story that's almost identical to New England. The individuals are different. The crops that were grown were different the climate and the species are different but this is a this is a broad scale change in the economy social values and the landscape that transpired across much of. Used in us as a consequence you know it's unlike anything that we could conceive of doing today or even anything that is being conceived of in Europe today. It did as you say result in something quite phenomenal which is the reestablishment native species and native forests all

across the region. And one of the things that we like to point out is that in many ways that gives people in the eastern US a second opportunity to decide what they want to do with their forested landscape. Perhaps I should introduce Again our guest for this part of focus 580 David Foster is a professor of biology at Harvard University and he is also director of the Harvard Forest and its long term ecological research program the Harvard Forest was established by the university in 1907 as a center for Forest Research in education in central Massachusetts. He is also the author one of the authors of contributors to a book that looks at some of what he and other scientists have learned about. The forests of Massachusetts and how they have changed over time. The title is forests in time the environmental consequences of 1000 years of change in New England. And the book is published by the Yale University Press and people are listening. If you have questions you certainly are welcome to call

3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 press we could talk a little bit about some of the some of the factors natural and otherwise that have helped to shape the force there in Massachusetts and weather certainly has been one of those notably hurricanes there have been a number of hurricanes and I guess the one of the recent ones the big ones was in the I was in the late 1930s. It was thirty eight I think. Maybe you can talk a little bit about about that how that kind of weather what it has done to change things over time. You know I think that the broad perspective is that in our endeavors to understand the landscape in the forest we really try to look at the the wide range of processes that are and have been

operative. And so you look at the human history that we've just been talking about but then you look at it natural events climate change in various kinds of meteorological events. You look at earlier people and so on without any doubt. Certainly one of the important disturbance processes in our landscape is hurricanes and these occur frequently but the major kind of catastrophic ones that blow down broad expanses of forests and disrupt people's lives and and. Change the structure of the landscapes really only occur on the order of every century. Now that sounds infrequent but in the lifetime of trees that live three or four centuries. Clearly these are something to be reckoned with. We've tried to interpret the history and impact of these storms and we've come to find out

that you know through time starting right after the the Mayflower landed and coming right through to the recent time there have been these these storms the 1938 hurricane is one of the most important because it's recent in memory and it also happens to be one of the largest in history. It swept through New England. It blew down forests over one hundred fifty miles in length and about 75 to 100 miles and where it had a huge impact on livelihoods and has structured our forests in ways that will be evident for another hundred years at least. Is there a big difference between what happens when let us say a hurricane comes through and blows down trees and what happens when human beings come through and cut the trees down.

Oh absolutely. Human beings of course cut the trees down with a purpose and the purpose is either to remove the wood and allow the forest to regrow or to clear the land and establish some other kind of land use. So the the human impact not only with the the mortality of the trees in the dropping of the individual trees on the ground but major reconfigurations of the structure and often times the ecology of the forest. These hurricanes that come through certainly do a tremendous amount of structural damage. They don't remove any of the material from the forest and so as a consequence you have actually a fairly remarkable and rapid recovery of variety of processes in the forests and characteristics in the forests that lend themselves to the re-establishment of a forest ecosystem.

Very quickly we have a caller who would like to come into the conversation here we welcome that people who are listening. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have a caller here in Charleston to talk with on our toll free line line for. Hello. Yes. The forest as we know it and human impacts upon those entities and what I see or perceive as a tidal wave of humanity coming that is going to destroy the ecological system on this globe six billion people a projected 12 billion people. Yes urbanization and the. Manufacture for human consumption. All these things come from natural resources and I can't perceive that

any lasting. Recovery of the sorts that you've been talking about and further when if I understand what a synthesis that's where we get our oxygen and when the source of that oxygen is removed or it doesn't mated and then we fill that void with pollution. I mean we so far you know stand successful still feet above the earth and the pollution is above us as a rule. But when it becomes so dense then the deforestation all those other things and human populations. Q Have any thoughts about those things. Yes I think I think the direction you're going is a important critical one which is we don't look at the history of any particular landscape for example knowing London it's remarkable

recovery. With kind of blinders and full optimism what we do is we recognize it as one story in a a very much larger story which is as you suggest includes the gradual ongoing continual deforestation and modification of the earth's surface. Nonetheless the fact that we do have this particular story and this particular landscapes gives us in the eastern United States an opportunity to reflect on on its history within the larger global context. But I think without any doubt we don't sit back you know quietly and and assume that there's a rosy picture in the in the future there are dire consequences of the kind of

environmental change that we've had have seen and that are ongoing in the on the earth. Thank you. On other calls with questions comments are certainly welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We started out talking about some of the various forces that come to to alter the forest weather extremes sort of weather events like a hurricane is one of them as anyplace there are also problems with insects and diseases and like other places in the country the forests there in New England in Massachusetts have been affected by things like the gypsy moth and there's been Dutch elm disease and you talk about the fact that now recently there's an Asian insect that's causing a lot of problems with that hemlock trees. I think it's interesting to me that apparently if you look at most of these things the plant

diseases insect problems they they most of them were introduced they came from someplace else they were things that sprung up there in the region. You know I think that you know the overall history of this landscape has actually been a combination of of local indigenous activities some of those wrought directly by people currently now. We have of course a major stress on our forest coming from the deposition of nitrogen compounds. A big fertilizing effect on our our forests as a result of fossil fuel combustion. But I think you're absolutely right. I mean many of these things ultimately are brought to us from outside of the region. I mean ultimately of course European arrival is the first hallmark of that. But with successive waves of people and materials brought

in we're constantly bombarding our landscape with with new stresses with new organisms with new challenges. Which it's having to confront and all of that leads to an ongoing dynamic and and change in the landscape which is leading to continually new conditions for us. We have some of the culture. Someone in Atlanta Illinois on our toll free line line for L.. Good morning gentlemen an interesting conversation that you might have covered this I might have missed it but I hope I didn't. In the recovery of the forest in New England What about animal life particularly birds that bird nesting could actually be similar to what it had been before the immigrants came in and leveled everything in them. And how is that today compared to older species of. Birds and of course neither animals are mammals. And what do you

think you have. It's a fascinating subject and a great question. The transformation that occurred in wildlife in general in the New England landscape and used in US are absolutely remarkable and it poses not only a number of basic scientific questions like the one that that was just framed but it leads to very very interesting management and almost ethical questions in terms of the specifics of your question on recovery. I can only offer and I think anybody can only offer an incomplete answer. We don't have a comprehensive. Enumeration and summary of the species that were here in the fifteen hundred or earlier. But what we have seen is a remarkable recovery of native fauna

woodland fauna and a tremendous recovery of in particular of woodland bird species. We have extensive areas of forest. They're getting older and more mature and as a consequence we are supporting increasingly large numbers of woodland bird species very gradually we're also starting to attract a lot of woodland and mammal species. And you've got to put this in perspective. I mean when Henry Thoreau was traipsing across the Massachusetts landscape he lamented the lack of large. Mammals and native wildlife and he made a declaration that the single largest wildlife species in eastern Massachusetts was a muskrat. Well we now have a landscape that not only has deer and newly arrived coyotes but has black bear and

fishers and bobcats and rapidly growing population of moose and so we're re-establishing wildlife both purposely by reintroducing them ourselves but also inadvertently just by creating the habitat that allows and to move in the landscape. The ethical dilemma and the management issue that arises is that there are whole suites of species that were characteristic of the landscape in Henry Thoreau's time. Who thrive on open lands who thrive in grasslands inch rubble and thickets and young force and all those species including quintessential bird species of the knowing in landscape like meadow larks and Bob Links and so on are declining and they're actually becoming rare and and uncommon and so the question that arises is what should we do about our landscape to both accommodate the

new arrivals of woodland species and deal with the losses of these open land species which are are decreasing. Well that is this argument is really irrelevant to me. We live on a 400 acre farm that's part of a spec designated as a nature preserve and we're trying to restore the rest of it. The real hero Hill area and of course the one time it was all timber ground and of course the file reflects that. But because of the loss of diversity around the farm there used to be a lot bigger expanse of the marshes. An across the prairie coming up against the timber here on the little creek that runs to the farm those of all been lost so we have developed some you know 70 or 80 acres of really nice tall tall grass prairie and under new government mandates they would rather see that timber and we have been able to to some dangerous species being in that grasslands been able to say that but my whole argument has been that yeah it's good to put a lot of a back in timber but we need to maintain some of that diversity because there is no other

diversity outside this the same area and that's exactly what you're talking about in New England that it all becomes temperate and you lose your slowly at one time. There wasn't any diversity because there was an even temper but now is a temperate. Come back. You have a lot of diversity and now that's going to. Yeah no I agree completely and. I've written some articles which I have tried to to look at the New England landscape very very broadly and argue that that in a sense if we were wise and and planning and thinking in a regional perspective which of course we aren't we could actually have it all. That is we could have a broadly forested landscape. We could allow big tracts of forests to develop into a new old growth landscape that would support these these woodland species at the same time if we were

careful about it and and thinking regionally we could identify places that would retain these open land species and could be managed in ways that are both useful for for agriculture and very useful for as habitat for a very different group of species so I'm very sympathetic to to the kind of pressures that are being being put upon you for management of your own land as it's happening all around us and the Eastern US. Interesting. Thank you very much. Thanks for the call. We'll go to the next caller this is champagne and line one. Hello. Yes. First of all I think you have a very dim mind topic and one that this very appropriate locally at this time. Are you on campus and I used thinking I don't know he said he's at Harvard. OK it sounds like he's in here in the studio with us because we've got a good connection but okay.

No he's not he's on the East Coast and let me say that there is a huge debate at the moment about the University of Illinois its very near to the banner Amanat only first to there you wrote attend big growth and there's quite a debate because of the foot in Obama run perhaps run 30 fairly straight north through the sort of area. So I want to remind people that own the same sort of concerns running a little later than yours in this area really didn't have a right of first to the area and we do have very I want to applaud the University of Illinois for trying to put him down and 500 acres of prairie and out for just the same reasons of you as you've been discussing the fact that the first birds don't stay in for say move out into Prairie and do that sort of thing.

But it needs a lot of education to bring people to the realization that if this is owner of what we have and there's not. Much of this we can institute so sometimes we have to to recreate it and sometimes we have to manage it. At the moment we have caused him more damage than we ever need and I am very deleterious to some of these areas but appreciate the conversation and thank you very much. OK well I appreciate the call. I don't know if there is you want to pick up on any of the things that the caller mentioned. Absolutely. I think in a sense I'd like to pull the various callers comments together without any doubt the the most pressing concern is the conversion of any type of native habitat in to humanize landscape and we very clearly need to direct that focus that contain that to the greatest

extent we can. Having then created conservation lands and protected landscapes of a variety of types. We then have all these questions and all these options as to how they might be managed and what we're seeing from the last two callers. Is this tension that exerts that exists out there. In the one handed It exists because people are loath to manage and yet humans and wildlife manage landscapes all the time. The other reason the tension exists is because Nature is pushing many of our landscapes that are open into forests and as a consequence were were losing losing species that and active in views that we know and so it is itself a very interesting and and different conservation discussion. We are heading into our last 15 minutes and I'd like to introduce Again our guest for anyone

who might happen to tune in recently We're talking with David Foster. He's a Harvard University side has two studies historical changes in forests things that are the result both of nature and human activity. He is the director of the Harvard Forest which is an area in western Massachusetts that was set aside by the university back in 1907 as a place to do Forest Research and Education. He is the one of the contributors time the environmental consequences of 1000 years of change in New England it's published by the Yale University Press. We thought it would be an opportunity to not only talk a bit about it. The northeast about New England but also try to generalize and see what sort of things we can understand by taking undertaking these kind of long studies and what you can learn about managing resources today. That's kind of the idea that we have a couple more people here who are waiting 3 3 9 4 5 5 here in Champaign-Urbana toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 go to well over to Terre Haute

Indiana. A line to the well I wrote down your comments about the hurricane prompted my call. I live in so-called hard. We had some extreme wind conditions here several times and the amazing thing to me was it wasn't that the older Krekar tree was the older mature tree. It was the intermediate ones that were torn. When start and you know that that's not an uncommon observation because often times some of the older trees have a variety reason do they because they've actually lived through a variety of stresses and disturbances that they become more firm and resistant to them or because they're different species they oftentimes will will survive better

through a new disturbance and will be the younger or intermediate trees in the same forest or their cronies Arthurs of large in comparison to their size so they don't blow over readily. Yeah that's right. You know like it was rather. This thing was almost exclusively with trees I would have liked to see in Korea and the ones that I wanted to preserve her gone. Well the 1938 hurricane is the single most when thrown species that is the one that was most susceptible to the winter Obeid the storm was also the most valuable. And so we experience exactly the same thing that you're talking about. Interesting thank you. Torent thank you we'll go to another caller here this listener is in Aurora. Line number four below. I I don't like to tell on myself but I am. I remember the heart king of 1938. I was on the East Coast at that time.

It was horrendous it was a terrible thing. It was so much so. You know those. I think the Hurricanes are worse and tornadoes. I really do. But my question is about birding and I'm doing a count with Kendall County a year count. We usually I have a 30 is a yearly count in the first Saturday of May for the state. But this is for a year starting we started at the first day of spring and it will go to spring of 99 what 20 0 5 and I would love to see a yellow bill. KOOGLE And my question is this. I had 10 callup caterpillars around core sets. What it be. Oh sure. I mean and I haven't heard about them lately. No yeah they're they're definitely around.

So I I'm unfortunately I can explain your your lack of of cuckoo observations but there certainly are are 10 caterpillars around the other bird I don't say much anymore is Isa metal lock and I are well out of that has to do with changes in the land in the way people are managing it. Yes and of course I have seen as the trees the CH The changes of wood in 30 years that I've been counting birds and of course you cry a lot but what else can you do sometimes but plant trees in your own backyard. I don't know what for. Do whatever you can do to keep the trees visible. When you make you do you make a very good point which is that most people don't see those changes. I mean most of us don't who we you know we go through our lives.

We there are very few of us who go back to the same spots year after year after year and make observations and so the ability to do that over a 30 year period where you're looking for birds but also looking at the landscape and seeing how the birds are responding is really an unusual you know an unusual event. And so you've got a very very special perspective. Yes and I. I've seen the Blue Bird come back which I think is is a very wonderful happening for any that have anybody seen that. I had a bluebird trail so that's one of them. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR THE CO. One of the things I wanted to make sure that we at least talk a little bit about is the kind of modification of the landscape that was a result of human beings and. And one thing I'd be interested in having you talk a little bit about is what human beings did before the Europeans

arrived because I think a lot of people have this idea that the indigenous people didn't really do didn't didn't do much or didn't modify the landscape to the extent that that European settlers did when they got here and then in a way that I suppose that may be true and in the same time they didn't just leave it alone they did indeed did indeed make changes and with the technology that they had I guess that the main way of doing that would be with burning. Yeah yeah and it's a very important subject. It's a very difficult subject to talk about because like any other or ecological or sociological subject it's very complex. Before European settlement people very certainly modified the landscape but they did it in very different ways in very different parts of the North American landscape. So for example we have a

large study in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in which the Maya can pollute really largely deforested the landscape and converted it to the Homes and Gardens and and cornfields. There were extensive. Native American settlements in huge cornfields going up the Mississippi River and in course in different parts of the country. Native Americans modified the landscape extensively by burning in New England. It probably was a very different situation. There was a relatively small population it didn't get corn as a major crop until about a thousand A.D. so only a few hundred years before European arrival. And so although there are certainly. Were people in the

landscape and they certainly cleared parts of the landscape and raised a few crops on it and hunted and fished and collected organisms. They probably didn't substantially modify the landscape. Certainly nothing in the way that for example the Maya did or some of the Mississippian people did and so it's highly varied. But there is an important point which is that it wasn't a depopulated landscape it wasn't a landscape across North America. It was completely driven by by natural process and so we have to take that into account when we try to imagine where our current landscape have come from. One of the things that is getting a lot of attention is that the issue of climate and ways in which human activity changes impacts on climate on a global scale and I guess I wonder whether you can see over this period of time that we've been talking about with the

Europeans coming. A lot of cutting disappearance of forest and over a period of about a century I guess as people moved on. Some people moved west people moved off the land did other sorts of things the forest returning. Can you see an impact on the regional climate as a result of that pattern of change. Now you can't actually observe it directly although And that's largely because we didn't have instrumentation out there to try to detect what are our important but relatively modest changes. We can now see some changes that are occurring you know in the last couple of decades but they the magnitude of changes that would have occurred say since Henry the rose time which you'd certainly expect it to have occurred as the land went from open to forest and really don't show up in any kind of

a of a climate signal that that we happen. How about it. Do you see. Because one of the one of the things that we've seen now is we've got pretty good records over the last hundred years weather records and then there are ways of making calculations past that and the conclusion is that we've seen this. An average increase in global temperature over the last hundred years of something between one and two degrees Fahrenheit and people are concerned about the long term consequences of continued increases in temperature and what that's going to mean for the environment. Have you seen over particularly say over the last century in the last couple of hundred years anything any sign of that kind of effect on the forest there in New England. Yeah again relative to some other longer term changes and certainly to the deforestation reforestation

change it's relatively modest but you do see an impact for example on the length of the growing season on the timing. A rival of particular bird species the flowering of different species and we're seeing a northward migration of some of the Southern bird mammal and insect species that might have been constrained by climate so there there certainly is some indication of that. You have to ferret it out from all the other changes that people are doing to the land. We have talked quite a bit here specifically about the New England. Are there some particular lessons to be gained for the kind of study that you have done here in your region that you can take away and apply to thinking about other places and not just New England but central Illinois perhaps or the Midwest or or elsewhere.

You know I think your your questions have really gotten it very general issues which is or which include for example. In interpret in your modern landscape you need to look at it within its historical context. What we have today is the product of climate change. Natural disturbance and human activity. And that's true whether you're talking about the prairie or the hardwood floors or the boreal forests of Canada. When we choose to manage our land we need to take that same kind of historical perspective because it will show us how our land is currently changing where it's come from and it gives us some of the potential that we have for restoring or managing it in the past. So I think there are a lot of general lessons that come out come from studying any particular landscape that you can

then spread across much broader regions. The final thing I'd say is that the questions that have arisen from the people who have called then are not in any way on like the questions that would arise in New England or in other parts of the country and so there is certainly some commonality out there. Well I want to thank you very much for talking with us. We certainly appreciate it. Just great talk. Our guest David Foster he's director of the Harvard Forest at Harvard University by the way if you're interested in finding out more and learning about Harvard Forest's they have a website. If you have internet access you can go there and take a look at it and if you'd like to read more on this subject you can look for the book that we have mentioned David Foster one of the editors of the book is titled forests in time the environmental consequences of 1000 years of change in New England it's published by the Yale University Press also our thanks to the folks there at Harvard for helping us set up this high quality connection here on their end.