Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Ice and snow illuminate coniferous forests that occur at higher elevations in New England and Maritime Canada.
Since the 1950s, clear-cutting has been the harvest method of choice and along with the use of herbicides
has led to the conversion of mixed-wood stands to even-aged, single-species softwood plantations. Agriculture
also removed much of the original forest, and fire, frequently used for land clearing, caused much inadvertent
loss and degradation of the forest. The Great Miramichi Fire of 1825 resulted from the joining of many separ-
ate land-clearing fires after a summer drought and destroyed roughly 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square
miles) of forest land, making it the largest single fire recorded in North America.
The increase in balsam fir, favored for a number of human activities, has fueled the severity and frequency
of outbreaks of spruce budworm (an insect endemic to the region) in the 20th century. Human-introduced dis-
eases have also had a major impact on hardwood species. Beech bark disease, which arrived through the port
of Halifax in the late 19th century, has decimated what was once among the most common hardwood species
in the region. The loss of this dominant hardwood has significantly affected the ecology of maritime forests.
Dutch elm disease, introduced into Ohio from Europe around 1930, has also ravaged this once-magnificent
bottomland hardwood, with ecological as well as aesthetic consequences.
