Thomas R. Vale

Clearcut Logging, Vegetation Dynamics, and Human Wisdom

Popular interpretations of clearcut forests have analogues in scientific models of vegetation dynamics. These models are not mutually exclusive, and the validity of each depends on degrees of generality, time frame, and spatial scale. Preference for an interpretation of clearcut logging may reflect the purposes that a viewer considers appropriate for commercial forestland. Increased prominence of indeterminism in both scientific study and the natural world has marked the shifting preferences for various models. Diverse human purposes and unpredictable consequences of vegetation disturbance suggest that clearcut logging should be viewed with caution. FIELD observations of areas subjected to clearcut logging offer a confused scene. Some clearcut patches are dense with vigorously growing small trees; other patches of similar age have become seemingly permanent brushfields. These contrasting vistas create a dilemma for a biogeographer. Is clearcut logging to be condemned as economically expedient but ecologically shortsighted? Or could the practice be a reasonable means of harvesting timber if the goal is to generate a young, even-aged forest of sunlightdemanding trees? This article articulates some tentative resolutions to this dilemma. It speculates that objective, scientific criteria, by themselves, may offer insufficient guidance in assessing the wisdom of clearcut logging or of other human disturbances of vegetation. Ecological data provide some perspective that would be described as wise, but they need a broad framework that considers human purpose to be the basis of a truly wise policy. Additionally the contemporary interpretation of nature as less orderly, less deterministic, and less predictable than has heretofore been thought argues that humans should deal gently with the natural world. Regardless of the purposes being served, this viewpoint raises serious questions about the wisdom of clearcut logging. INTERPRETING CLEARCUT FORESTS The view of a clearcut forest or a large clearcut forest patch, as in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, suggests one of at least five possible interpretations (Fig. 1 and Table I). The first stresses a historical perspective, the old-growth forest of huge trees as the primeval forest on a virgin continent, and condemns clearcutting as simple forest destruction. The second interpretation looks forward in time, with the emphasis on the vegetation development and the young trees that will eventually reestablish the preclearcut forest after the logging. The third perspective envisions a * DR. VALE is a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.39 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 05:33:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW FIG. 1-The landscape of a clearcut forest may evoke varied responses from different people. series of such cuts and recoveries, each logging episode being followed by forest regeneration that permits subsequent cutting. In this viewpoint the decadent, senescent, old-growth forest is transformed by the cycles of cutting into a young, productive, and periodically harvested resource. The fourth interpretation anticipates a forest that has been reestablished on the site but TABLE I-INTERPRETATION OF CLEARCUT LOGGING POPULAR ASSUMPTION FOREST-DYNAMICS MODEL Destruction of primeval forest Static Reestablishment of prelogging forest Developmental (Clements) Repeated logging to maintain forest Cyclical (Watt) of young, productive trees Different postand prelogging forests Nondevelopmental (Egler) Nonforest postlogging vegetation Nondevelopmental (Egler) that differs from the prelogging landscape. The perceived differences might lie in characteristics such as the species composition and the spatial pattern of trees. In the fifth interpretation, the forest does not recover: only herbaceous or brushy vegetation maintains itself on the site of the former oldgrowth forest. This perspective is similar to the first in that both view the forest as eliminated; however, the focus is on the lack of recovery by young trees rather than on the removal of the old forest. Each of the five common perspectives has an analogue in a scientific model of forest dynamics (Fig. 2). The historical vision of the old-growth 376 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.39 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 05:33:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms LOGGING AND HUMAN WISDOM static, ENVIRONMENTA Clements, or Egler models ________---_---, VEGETATION VEGETATION i NOT c NOT I I DISTURBED ?