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1 results

  • 7 - Views of Forests

  • from Part I - Historical Perspective
  • Gordon Bonan, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
  • Book:
    Seeing the Forest for the Trees
    Published online:
    02 February 2023
    Print publication:
    09 February 2023, pp 82-98

  • Summary

    Climate is but one way to perceive forests. In our comparatively short time on Earth, we humans have forged an inextricable bond with forests. Trees have inspired human imagination for tens of thousands of years. Forests are central to the cultural evolution of humankind and have molded our beliefs and values and societies. Our world would be impoverished without forests. The forest-climate question was of much common knowledge during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many of the scholars in the debate also opined on the aesthetics of trees and their contributions to the human experience. How we view forests, and how we value them, must be considered from a multifaceted standpoint that recognizes their many contributions to humanity and planet Earth, not just as public utilities that influence climate. The rationalism of science must be balanced with the romanticism of forests.