Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
2.3. The abundance and limits of natural resources
Until the 1920s, the abundance of natural resources and the immense size of the
country supported Americans in the belief that their territory was a sort of Promised
Land. Their management of renewable and non-renewable natural resources was
therefore just as negligent as their manpower was scarce. Meanwhile, entire regions
relied on farming for economic development. Gradually, the limits of this
development model, and the damage caused by it, began to show. Americans came
to realize that some strategic non-renewable resources were being depleted. The
United States became particularly dependent on its oil imports, starting in 1950.
They were also slow to discover that mining was unsustainable, and caused great
pollution. There are many ghost towns in the United States in areas where a mineral
resource was fully exhausted or its extraction abandoned. Finally, they have only
very recently become aware of the serious consequences of global warming caused
by a development model that is based on the unrestrained consumption of fossil
fuels, which are responsible for massive emissions of greenhouse gases. The
diversity of usable natural resources on US territory is considerable. This topic
focuses on just one of those renewable resources - the forest. The forest is a good
example of the abundance of resources as well as of the incomplete transition from
overusing natural resources to sustainably managing them. In the case of fossil fuel
resources, the following section will be on non-renewable resources, which are
destined to become the main geopolitical, economic and environmental issue for the
country to confront in the coming years.
2.4. Working towards the sustainable management of the American forest
As half of the US territory was covered in forest at the start of the colonial
period, logging is one of the oldest forms of natural resource exploitation in the
United States. Boston's emergence in the eighteenth century as the United States'
first city was as a result of the development of shipbuilding' be better. While the US
territory represents just 6% of the world's inhabited lands, it represents 10% of the
world's forests and provides 25% of the world's production of wood and wood
products.
Between 1630 and 1907, logging and agricultural clearing reduced American
forests which were reduced from an estimated area of 423 million hectares to 307
million hectares, mainly in the Northeast and the South. Today, the forest still covers
302 million hectares, or one-third of the country's total land area. Forest area
declined in the 20th century in the West and in the South, but it rose in the North
and the East. Forest protection began early. The National Forest Service was
founded in 1891. National forest reserves represent the majority of protected forest
