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Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Human-Environment Interactions in Forest Ecosystems

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What people do is behind the build-up of earth-warming gases. For example, carbon dioxide builds up from people using fossil fuels and cutting down tropical forests. Methane builds up from people raising so many animals and so much irrigated rice. These gases change climate. Changed climate means changed air and water, changed farming, and changed life.

In these cases, people change land cover by changing land use. Is it surprising that changing forest cover is so serious? Trees are homes to plants, people, bugs, birds and animals. They keep us all breathing, by adding oxygen to the air. They make sure there's carbon, what with green things growing old and dying. They make sure there's water by getting rainfall into the ground and the water table. They make sure water levels stay about the same in streams and stop soil erosion on stream banks.

Land cover always changes. But that used to be part of natural climate changes taking place over a long time. What's different now is fast-paced land clearing for grazing, farming, and building dams, roads and suburbs. Some forests grow back. Others not.

Natural scientists were the first squeaky wheels about the role of people in all this. They couldn't come up with solutions, on their own, to problem changes in air and weather. They needed the help of social scientists. For everywhere natural scientists were SEEING THE FOREST AND THE TREES they were also seeing HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS IN FOREST ECOSYSTEMS.

Editors Emilio F Moran and Elinor Ostrom, along with their contributing writers, all agree the future of forests, forest livers, and people depends on natural and social scientists working together. The problems of the forest, and of the quality of life on earth, have nature and people aspects. But our educational system gets in the way of this kind of problem-solving. From elementary schools all the way through universities, the natural and social sciences are kept apart. That can change, with enough time, goodwill and effort, say the editors and writers. And the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change at Indiana University sets a fine example.

This well-indexed book has helpful tables, photographs and figures. It ends with a good glossary and an up-to-date set of references. The editors say they're writing for university and university-level research settings. The style and wording can be academic. But the problems and problem-solving go with clear graphics, examples and conclusions. So readers should catch all the fine points of what Virginia Tech master gardeners call that most important wildlands-urban interface.