A very popular book - and very much encouraged on the Web - is Charles E. Little's The Dying of the Trees . This book represents an extreme position held by those that believe we are in a major crisis and are in immediate danger of losing vast acres of forests and entire species.
Being compared to Silent Spring, Little's book makes an emotional case by stating that "The lovely flowering dogwood appears to be doomed in its native setting. High-elevation spruce and fir along the Appalachian ridge from Vermont to North Carolina have been reduced to a fraction of their original numbers. The great ponderosa pines are beset by ozone drifting to the mountains from polluted California valleys. Ruthless logging has changed the composition of the forests of the intermountain West, rendering them vulnerable to pests and death and, finally, mass fire. The gypsy moth has opportunistically followed the axe and plowshare southward and westward through weakened forests from its unfortunate Medford, Massachusetts, starting point."
Claims have been made that the United States has a "sick and dying" forest. In Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly, it is suggested that this continent-wide crisis of acid rain, clear cuts, killer smog, pesticides, heavy metals, ozone, logging, and fire suppression are killing our trees. Not all these factors are even considered forest decline by scientific definition.
What then is the truth?
Forest decline is a complex disorder: it is not a disease, although disease organisms are often involved. This decline process originates from many stresses on a forest stand and results in progressive loss of tree vigor. Slow shoot and root death is usually preceded by a subtle but consistent reduction in annual radial growth. Mortality is common, although affected trees may recover after removing stresses. It is a real disorder...but is it widespread?
The decline of certain forests are and have been universally known for centuries. Answers as to why those forests are dying is not immediately apparent but there is much speculation and many causal agents.
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