Transcript Slide 1

What and How
We Think of
Forests
Week 1: Historical basis
for modern day forestry
Foundations in Forest
Resources and Conservation
Summer B, 2011
Today’s Agenda: June 27th, 2011
• Welcome! Syllabus & logistics
• What and how we think of forests
• Simple criteria used to describe
any forest
– Our preferences
• Class Introductions
• Break (around 10:30/45 AM)
• “How to survive a plane crash”
Representations of what and
how we think of forests
• All images, media, objects, and writings are
historically rooted = “Cultural Artifacts”
– Artifacts of time, place, way of thinking
– Reflect and symbolize their cultural context
– Change over time
• Why is it important to pay attention to these?
– Influence beliefs/ attitudes/ public opinion about
forests
– Beliefs and attitudes drive forest use and
policy, impacting us as forest resource
managers and scientists
What is a forest artifact?
From Objects to Popular Media
Forests represented in our most
prevalent cultural artifact…motion
picture media
• 1) What does the forest represent?
• 2) What is the relationship between people
and forests?
• 3) How does the artifact make people think
about forests?
EXAMPLES
Other Examples
• TV
– Car commercials e.g. Lexus driving through
wilderness
• Luxury, Freedom, Entitlement
– Mountain Dew-type commercials
• Adventure, physical challenge and courage
• Male bonding/ masculinity
• Man’s leisure time is spent inhabiting the
forest (a 19th Century development inspired
by the Transcendentalists)
• Books, Fairy Tales
Artifacts reflect how people have varied in
their response to forests throughout history
– Dante (c. 1310-1320) Inferno "Midway upon the
journey of our life/ I found myself within a forest dark/
For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah
me! How hard a thing it is to say/ What was the forest
savage, rough, and stern/ Which in the very thought
renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more.”
– Patrick Gass of Lewis and Clark Expedition, at the
mouth of a mountain river in Montana (1805), “A
country which presents little to our view but scenes of
barrenness and desolation”
– Paul Simon (1963), environmental movement of
1960s, "I'd rather be a forest than a street..... "
Why? Psychological Theory
Basis for our response and use of particular
forest communities and types
• “Nurture, not nature” theory
1. Early childhood experience (Clare Cooper
Marcus, UC Berkeley)
•
Bioevolutionary theories
2. Collective unconscious (Carl Gustav Jung, )
3. Prospect-refuge (Jay Appleton, 1975)
1. Early Childhood Experience
• We bond with the forests of our youth, and
tend to idealize them; all other forests are
evaluated in comparison to that “template”
forest
– E.g. Warner Herzog, prolific German film
maker (e.g. Grizzly Man)
• Template: Germany; grew up in very orderly,
intensively managed forests of Germany
Black Forest, Germany
• Pastoral landscape
• Human elements interwoven
• Security, comfort
• Wilderness tamed by order
•Little undergrowth
•Unimpeded movement
• High light penetration at eye levelexposure
2. Collective Unconscious
• Carl Gustav Jung: Inherited sense of
aesthetics of landscapes based on
survival…the Collective Unconscious, “A
reservoir of the experiences of our
species”
– Forests hide wild animals and outlaws
• Example From T. H. White The Once and Future
King (1939) “The mad and wicked animals were
not the only inhabitants of the crowded gloom.
When men themselves became wicked they took
refuge there, outlaws cunning and bloody...”
3. Prospect-Refuge
• Jay Appleton (1975)
• The right balance of trees and open spaces, so
we could see but not be seen
• Oldest human settlements were in savannas of
East Africa, & as a species we have spent
MOST of our time living outdoors
• “Habitat Theory” also maintains that humans
preferred edge habitats
– High plant and animal diversity
– Building materials from younger trees on edge
– Both access and shelter
How are forests described?
Characterization of forest attributes
• Basic tool-less assessments allow for
descriptions and comparisons between forests
• Relationship between characteristics of forest
communities and human preference for
recreation sites
– A. Dominant and characteristic species
– B. Density
– C. Pattern
– D. Structure
A. Dominant and Characteristic Species
• Dominant species - because of their size and density, they
control the microclimate and ecological character of the
plant community
• Characteristic species - the most common species in the
plant community
Example: Pine Flatwoods
Trees:
Slash pine (Pinus ellioittii)
Shrubs:
Saw palmetto (Serenoa repens)
Gallberry (Ilex glabra)
Human Preference
• Conifer (e.g. pine) stands > hardwood
(e.g. oak) stands
B. Density - the number of trees per
unit area of a forest stand
• Density varies among the species in a
forest stand
• Example: Redwood stand along San
Leandro Creek in Alameda County, CA
•
•
•
•
Species
Redwood
California bay
Madrone
Density(#/acre)
98
43
2
Human Preference
• Low density > high density
Incense cedar stand
Sand pine stand
C. Pattern
Pattern - the arrangement of trees on the horizontal plane of
the forest stand; 3 main types
Random pattern
Why?
Wind-blown seeds, or random
pattern of seed lodgement
Regular pattern– rare in nature
Why? Competitive exclusion
• In harsh environments
(competition)
• Allelopathy (FL rosemary)
• Plantation Forestry (why?)
Random
Regular
Contagious pattern
Why?
1. Clustering of offspring around parent plant,
Vegetative reproduction (Oak, Redwood)
2. Inefficient seed dispersal (e.g. California
buckeye)
3. Influence of one species in creating "islands" of
environments especially favorable for the
establishment of other species (nurse logs in
Pacific Northwest)
Contagious pattern- (nurse log- cedar, with hemock)
Contagious
pattern- (veg.
reproduction
redwood)
Contagious- seed dispersal
California Buckeye
Human Preference
• Contagious or random > regular
D. Structure
• Structure - arrangement on a vertical
plane
• Variations of structure in forest stands
Human Preference
• Tree / herb structure preferred
• Low preference for forest stands with welldeveloped midstory or shrub layer
Class Introductions
• What was the forest of your childhood?
– What is your preferred forest?
• Does your preference uphold/ disprove any
of the three theories?
• Use the descriptive tools you learned:
What is its pattern, structure, dominant
species (if known), and density?
Your Instructors: Our Childhood
Forests
Maxwell Wightman
Outside of the forest– short/ tall grass
prairie (Dr. Tim Martin a.k.a. Dr. Xylem)
Hometown: Oklahoma City
Tim Martin
Post Oak, Blackjack Oak
Silver Maple
Red Pine
And finally…Longleaf Pine
BBMH- Mixed
Hardwood/
Coniferous NE
Forest (Max
and Leda)
Hometown: Ithaca, NY
Leda Kobziar
White Pine Siding
Birch, Maple
Birch
2nd Growth Eastern Deciduous
Class Introductions
• What was the forest of your childhood?
– What is your preferred forest?
• Does your preference uphold/ disprove any
of the three theories?
• Use the descriptive tools you learned:
What is its pattern, structure, dominant
species (if known), and density?
Your Forest Preferences?
1. Use
• Recreation
• Wildlife
habitat
• Timber supply
• Preservation
2. Theories
• Prospect/refuge
• Early childhood
• Collective
unconscious
3. Forest Attributes
•
•
•
•
Conifers > hardwoods (dominant/ charac. Spp.)
Open forests (density)
Not regular spacing (pattern)
Overstory w/ herbs, low shrubs (structure)