Think of Our Forests

This Arbor Day, Let’s Think of Our Forests

By Peggy Rudberg

From the dawn of humanity, trees have sustained and protected us by providing shelter, fuel, and habitat. Trees also perform the crucial functions of sequestering carbon—one tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year—and producing oxygen—two mature trees can provide one person with oxygen for a year.At the close of the last ice age, over 11,000 years ago, it’s estimated that forests covered 50 percent of the Earth’s land area. Today about 30 percent of the world’s landmass is woodland. In 1630 forests covered 46 percent of this country, while today 33 percent is forested. In New Mexico forest coverage is about 21 percent. Most deforestation is a result of human activities, principally agriculture and logging, activities that have accelerated in the past two centuries as the human population has exploded, from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.5 billion today.Early use and collection of trees allowed forests to reproduce new individuals at sustainable levels. When people transitioned from hunting and foraging to agriculture, slash and burn was used to clear land for planting and grazing. Subsequent overuse led to loss of organic matter, resulting in soil unable to sustain new growth. When the land was no longer productive, people moved on to new areas and repeated the process.Trees are also harvested as commodities. From 1909 to 1926 over 16 million trees were felled from what is now the Pecos Wilderness for Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad ties. In the United States today around 11 million acres are logged each year for lumber, furniture, and other products. In 2015 the world consumed 400 millions tons of paper products. In an effort to attain zero-carbon standards, the building industry is substituting wood for concrete and steel; wood pellets produced to replace fossil fuels has increased from over 10 million tons in 2008 to over 28 million tons in 2015. Some logged land is replanted; other land is left to regenerate naturally, which can take up to 50 years.The mining and extraction industries, including their infrastructure, also cause forest loss and land degradation from toxic byproducts. New Mexico has approximately 30,000 producing oil wells and 28,000 natural gas wells. Many of these wells are hydraulically fractured. A 1,350-foot-deep open-pit copper mine has not only displaced a forest but also the town of Santa Rita, New Mexico.Not all forest destruction is intentional. Warming winters have increased insect infestations. In 2014 the mountain pine beetle, endemic to the Rocky Mountains, destroyed over 46 million acres of trees in the United States and 35 million acres in British Columbia. From 2000 to 2017 more than 2,300,000 acres in New Mexico suffered tree mortalities from bark beetles. Global warming has also escalated the frequency and scale of wildfires. In the summers of 2011 and 2012 two fires in New Mexico national forests destroyed 696 square miles of woodland.Organizations like the United Nations, university science departments like that of Yale, and governments like Norway are working to reduce land degradation and deforestation worldwide. This Arbor Day (April 26) and every day we can help by supporting these efforts, safeguarding our local resources, and planting trees.Resources:Arbor Day Foundation, Replanting Our ForestsEnvironmental Literacy Council, ForestsNew Mexico Forestry Division, New Mexico Forest Health Conditions 2018U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, The State of the World’s Forests(2018)U.S. Forest Service, National Forests and GrasslandsYale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Global Forest Atlas