Replanting the Douglas Fir Forest: Forest Science and Forest Practice in the Pacific Northwest, 1890--1945 (2004)
Brock, Emily Katherine (Author)
Princeton University
Isenberg, Andrew
Edition Details: Advisor: Isenberg, Andrew
Physical Details: 288 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation charts the strategies for reforestation of the Douglas fir forests of the United States Pacific Northwest from the 1890s to the 1940s. Through these strategies a new understanding of the productive industrial forest developed around a single goal, the production of saleable lumber. Both environmental history and history of science methodologies are used to explore the practice and science of regenerating forests after logging. New connections are made between issues of land use, cultural values, and scientific innovation in the twentieth century American forest. By the 1930s, cultural and governmental demand for reforestation had begun to outstrip the pace of Douglas fir forest science. Douglas fir's physiological quirks made it especially difficult to regenerate in a natural setting. The often ineffective reforestation campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s were based on succession and climax theories of plant ecology. However, these theories were not easily translated into practical solutions. Friction between the ethical and economic demands of the New Deal and the detached atmosphere of academic forest science led to disagreements among professional foresters. Some accused the Journal of Forestry of ignoring the important social dimensions of their field. A split developed between foresters, who accepted the inevitability of logging, and preservationists, who pushed for wilderness preservation. As preservationists split off from academic forestry to found the modern wilderness movement, foresters refocused themselves toward answering practical problems. The destruction of forests by logging caused concern that the lumber industry was not ensuring the permanence of the nation's forest resources. Beginning in the late 1930s the American lumber industry promoted a message that timber could be regarded as a crop much like corn or wheat, and thus the damage was reversible. The Weyerhaeuser Timber Company developed the first tree farm, a highly regimented Douglas fir planting under intensive cultivation. Private industry groups promoted these newly adopted attitudes toward reforestation to the American public to improve their industry's image. Examining the history of reforestation allows a new perspective on American attitudes toward resource depletion, land use, and forest preservation.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/08 (2005): 3126. UMI pub. no. 3143562.
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