Check out more of the original article here: http://www.earthzine.org/2009/05/07/forest-watch-science-and-education-strive-to-halt-climate-change/
 |
| Eastern White Pine – Pinus strobus L. USDA photo |
The state of New Hampshire, one of the most densely forested in the United States, takes its Eastern white pines very seriously. In Colonial times, the tree’s enormous height (one ancient tree was recorded to be 220 feet tall), straight trunk and flexibility made it the preferred source of masts for the British Royal Navy and the subject of one of the Colonies’ first laws, the Mast Preservation Clause of 1691. That was the cause of the nation’s first revolt against Great Britain in 1772 in Goffstown and Weare, N.H.
In the early years of the nation, millions of acres of Eastern white pine – Pinus strobus L. – stretched across southern Canada, the northeastern U.S., and as far west as northeastern Iowa, and as far south as northern Georgia. But by the 1800s most of the New World’s vast virgin forests had been logged out. Yet the Eastern white pine is a fast-growing conifer, upright with long five-needled polystelic shoots and it still abounds, second only to the sugar maple in numbers.
The neighboring state of Maine holds the title of “The Pine Tree State” and boasts the tallest Eastern white pine now standing at 132 feet (National Register of Big Trees), but New Hampshire’s harvest of Eastern white pine and hardwoods is still the state’s largest industry at $134 million for the wood alone. Emblematic of the dominance of trees in New Hampshire’s culture and economy are the University of New Hampshire’s academic and cooperative extension forestry programs for landowners, conservationists, students, researchers, policy planners and the lumber industry.
Yet industrial and automobile pollution concentrated around the state’s cities had taken their toll on the Eastern white pine. Residents didn’t need a forestry degree to see that the trees looked unhealthy—stunted with rust-colored needles. Congress passed the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990 to reduce the volume and size of air particulates and their damage to human health (death included) and vegetation. Subsequent amendments went even further. But when the smog cleared, there still was no systematic, scientific evidence to measure how much the Clean Air Act was helping the trees.
