When Europeans first explored the eastern shores of North America, trees covered more than 90% of Pennsylvania’s 29 million acres. Its moderate climate, abundant rainfall and rich soils gave rise to dense forests with plants and animals unknown in Europe. The state provided lumber that built houses, heat those homes, were used for growing railroads and burned in charcoal furnaces that fueled the iron industry.
By 1900, Pennsylvania had lost more than 60% of its forests.
But efforts to restore the forests worked.
Today, Pennsylvania’s hardwoods is a $28 billion a year industry. The state is number one in the country for hardwoods.
On The Spark Monday, Jonathan Geyer, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s Hardwoods Development Council, discussed how the forest is sustained,”Keeping forest as forests is very important. So in the forest products industry, when we practice sustainable forestry, we’re ensuring that that forest is going to be a forest in the future. But in order to do that, we need to ensure that young trees have the ability to grow. Trees need three things sunlight, space and water. If there’s a dense upper canopy that sunlight can’t get through to the forest floor. So we need to open the canopy up to allow that sunlight to come to the forest floor and allow those young trees to grow. So sustainable forestry is harvesting a tree and allowing new ones to grow.”
Geyer said cutting down trees is actually good for the environment, even though that may seem counterintuitive to some,”Using wood in general is one of the best things you can do for the environment. Because what if in the United States it’s going to be sustainably managed? When you’re buying it locally, it’s even better because as trees grow, as you know, they they perform photosynthesis. They take in carbon dioxide out of the environment, turn it into oxygen for us to breathe. But then that carbon is stored within the wood. So anything that is in anything that you have that it’s made of wood is stored carbon. When we allow sustainable forestry to happen and allow new trees to grow, those young trees that are growing back or that talk through those harvested, those trees are absorbing carbon, in fact, at a faster rate than what that older tree was absorbing carbon because young trees like young animals, they grow faster, they grow quicker. So more carbon is getting sequestered out of the atmosphere and turned into wood. When we use wood, we’re keeping that carbon out of the atmosphere. So it’s a great environmental benefit to use wood from sustainably managed forests.”
Source: witf.org
Photo Credit: pexels-elkhan-ganiyev
Categories: Pennsylvania, Harvesting, Sustainable Agriculture, Weather