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subsidies and afforestation schemes have left lingering scepticism amongst older age groups
(Holden et  al. 2007, Davies 2011). At the same time, younger sectors of upland society have
been priced out of the housing market by commuters and holiday home owners, and are
looking for employment opportunities elsewhere. Diversification of incomes in a heteroge-
neous mosaic landscape may be part of the solution; tourism and recreation, windfarms, car-
bon storage, cafes, speciality farm produce like meat, cheese, and honey can all provide
additional incomes for upland farms, while preserving and restoring landscapes of great cul-
tural and heritage significance. Building an evidence base, encouraging citizen science, and
incorporating multiple perspectives will all be needed as part of an adaptive approach that
constantly incorporates societal and environmental change (Holden et al. 2007, Davies 2011).
Conserving no-analogue landscapes in the northern hardwood region
of eastern North America
Changing climate and land-use histories have created landscapes with no past analogue, raising
conservation challenges that rely on a good understanding of ecological process and cultural
context. The modern landscape of eastern North America is best understood through a knowl-
edge of past natural and cultural factors, and its unique composition demands contrasting con-
servation and management options to meet a range of social, ecological and environmental
objectives (Foster 2002a, 2003). Before extensive human impact by European settlers, northern
hardwood forests had always been dynamic, responding to climate changes, tornadoes, out-
breaks of disease, and management by native Americans, factors which all led to changes in tree
distribution and reshuffling of species assemblages (Jackson 2006). Returning to past forest
composition is unlikely and anyway raises questions of how baseline restoration targets can be
chosen in a dynamic environment with uncertain future climate, disease and development sce-
narios (Williams and Jackson 2007). Therefore, new approaches to landscape management are
developing that consider environmental change and cultural legacies, and which incorporate
multiple stakeholder perspectives, and a diverse array of landscape management models.
Understanding the landscape patterns of today requires a knowledge of both biophysical
and cultural factors. The major patterns of forest in north-eastern USA and south-eastern
Canada are more boreal forest types of spruce, hemlock, fir, and jack pine in cooler areas,
mixed conifer and broadleaf species including beech, birch, and maple at intermediate cli-
mate and elevation, and oak/hickory hardwood forest in the warmer south and river valleys
(North and Keeton 2008). These patterns are dynamic, however, and have responded to
changing environmental and social drivers over timescales of decades to millennia. Ever
since the retreat of the ice sheets, species migration and reshuffling has occurred, creating
new combinations of forest species, as trees with different climatic and ecological tolerances
respond individualistically to climate change, disturbance, and diseases (Williams and Jack-
son 2007). From 8,000-5,000 years ago, in the mid-Holocene altithermal, temperatures were
1-2 ° C warmer than today, and this drove the northward migration of red maple, beech, and
hickory. Hemlock and pine had a more extensive northern range and boreal species like
spruce retreated northward. Almost 5,000 years ago, an outbreak of the eastern hemlock
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