Deforestation
Overview
The Natural Context
Human Impacts
Remediation Efforts
References
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Deforestation in Iceland
Iceland is famous for its
open, windswept landscapes. The island is almost entirely barren, with
just a few small clusters of trees surviving along the coasts. This,
however, is not Iceland’s natural condition. When the first settlers
reached Iceland in the latter half of the 9th century, forests covered
between 25 and 40% of the landscape. However, intensive deforestation
quickly decimated the forests, reducing their coverage to as little as
0.5% by the early 20th century.1 Iceland has experienced
some of the worst deforestation on the planet. A combination of poor
soils, a harsh climate, and human pressure have made the island
especially vulnerable to forest loss. Iceland has also suffered from
the side-effects of deforestation, including high erosion rates and
sandstorms. While Iceland has made efforts to remediate deforestation,
the degradation of its forests remains one of the greatest ecological
concerns on the island.
Many
of Iceland’s barren landscapes do not occur naturally. They result from
over a millennium of human-caused deforestation, soil degradation, and
erosion.
http://www.iceland-like-a-local.com/iceland-travel/images/guide/odadahraun-panorama.jpg
The Natural Context
Iceland’s
environment is already marginal for forest growth. Forests were never
very large: Icelanders have a joke that, if lost in an Icelandic
forest, a person can stand up, look over the trees, and find his way
out.2 This wasn’t always the case, though. In the late
Miocene, around 15 million years ago, Iceland was host to a wide
diversity of subtropical flora. Grímsson et. al report that forests of
sequoia, beech, and magnolia used to cover the island (Grímsson et. al,
2007).3 As the Earth’s climate cooled, these subtropical
forests gradually died off. By the start of the Pleistocene, pine,
birch, alder, and a few other species still lived in Iceland. With each
glaciation, cold climates restricted the range of the forests, with
pines dying out 1.1 million years ago and alder disappearing by 500,000
years ago.1 Iceland’s modern-day forests are almost entirely
composed of downy birch, with a few stands of rowan and aspen surviving
in sheltered spots.1 While species-poor, this birch forest
still covered much of the island at the time of human’s arrival. As the
early settlers would come to discover, the forest played a crucial role
in the health of Iceland’s environment.
In
the late Miocene, Iceland was home to an array of subtropical tree
species. The environment may have resembled this beech-magnolia forest,
found today in the southeastern United States.
https://i1.wp.com/www.flowersgallery.net/gallery/bluebell/bluebell-1.jpg
Human Impacts
Human
settlement brought massive changes to Iceland’s landscape. The first
Icelanders originated from Iron-Age Scandinavia; more information about
them can be found here. As soon as they arrived, they began to slash and burn the forests, clearing land for sheep pasture and farmland. 4 These
practices can lead to deforestation anywhere, but Iceland was
particularly susceptible. Icelandic soils are generally aeolian
deposits of volcanic ash, and are uniquely vulnerable to erosion
(Arnalds, 2008). 5 In fact, Iceland’s soils are more
susceptible to wind erosion than any soil in the world; only lunar soil
blows away more easily. 2 More information about Iceland's unusual erosion rates can be found at this link.
And Iceland has plenty of wind, with a harsh, stormy climate leading to
heavy aeolian and water erosion. Once forests no longer held the soil
in place, erosion proceeded at a rapid rate. Soon after humans arrived
and began to farm, Iceland had lost almost all of its forests.
Since
the first settlers arrived, sheep grazing has been a mainstay of
Icelandic life. Unfortunately, sheep thrive in open spaces, and
sheepherding settlers quickly razed Iceland’s forests for pasture.
Further grazing on deforested land prevented the return of stabilizing
vegatation, leading to desertification.
http://blog.parrikar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sheep-1.jpg
Even
once widespread forest clearing ceased, the environmental impacts of
deforestation remained. Iceland’s poor soils, lacking stabilizing
vegetation, easily eroded away. Intensive sheep grazing prevented any
vegetation from taking hold in the desertifying land. This
environmental degradation continued for a millennium, and today, much
of Iceland is considered a desert (Arnalds, 2008).5 Fields
of sands and ash cover the interior, and no plants grow on what used to
be forested land. Aside from ecological destruction and lack of
farmland, Iceland’s desertification has led to sandstorms that sweep
down from the interior. These clouds of dust can wipe out crops and
livestock, threatening the livelihoods of Iceland’s farmers.6 After one particularly bad sandstorm in the late 19th century, Iceland decided to do something about its deforestation problem.
With
nothing to hold the poorly-consolidated soil in place, Iceland’s strong
winds lead to massive sandstorms. These clouds of dust sweep across the
landscape, devastating the environment and threatening the livelihoods
of Icelanders living in their path.
http://icelandmag.visir.is/sites/default/files/styles/lightbox/public/thumbnails/image/fr_20160809_044293.jpg?itok=QcFCwsyh
Remediation Efforts
Iceland founded the world’s first Soil Conservation Service in 1907.7
Since then, the nation has made extensive efforts to reforest the
landscape. Tree planting efforts have managed to restore forest cover
from a low of 0.5% to the current total around 2%, a figure that rises
every day. Planting trees is one of the main ways is which Iceland aims
to mitigate its net carbon dioxide emmissions; for another way, see
this link. Iceland even has a nascent forestry industry, with thinned trees processed into forest products.
Replanted
forests, like this one, are becoming more common in Iceland. Still,
issues remain -- the forest above is of non-native spruce, not native
birch, and forests still cover just 2% of the island.
https://northernwoodlands.org/images/articles/Skogarpesi_Iceland_w.jpg
Still,
issues remain for Iceland’s reforestation project. Despite the relative
successes of tree planting, the environment is devastated compared to
its original state. And while any tree planting is beneficial, only
around 30% of the replanted forests are native birch.1
Another significant obstacle is motivation. Reforestation is expensive,
and despite the significant societal and environmental benefits of
forests, replanting them in Iceland is not profitable. Iceland has
handled this by granting the task of reforestation to government
agencies and nonprofit groups. However, Iceland was hit hard by the
2008 recession, and it struggles with motivating voters to put tax
dollars into forestry projects.1 Despite the vast scale of
the problem and the challenges still present, Iceland has made
substantial progress towards reversing deforestation. For one of the
world’s most devastating examples of environmental catastrophe, Iceland
is doing an admirable job of regenerating its environment.
References1 ”Forestry in a Treeless Land.” Icelandic Forest Service, 2017 http://www.skogur.is/english/forestry-in-a-treeless-land/
2
Maksimov, Boris “Rolling Back Iceland’s Big Desert.” BBC News, BBC, 2
August 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4737743.stm
3 Grímsson,
F. and Denk, T. (2007), Floristic turnover in Iceland from 15 to 6 Ma –
extracting biogeographical signals from fossil floral assemblages.
Journal of Biogeography, 34: 1490–1504.
doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2007.01712.x
4
Harris, Richard “Viking Farms Tell Cautionary Climate Tale.” NPR, 3
December 2007
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16835101
5
Arnalds, Ólafur “Soils of Iceland.” Jökull, Iceland Glaciological
Society and Geoscience Society of Iceland, No. 58, 2008
http://jardvegsstofa.lbhi.is/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=1878
6 Fountain,
Henry “Vikings Razed the Forests. Can Iceland Regrow Them?.” New York
Times, 20 October 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/20/climate/iceland-trees-reforestation.html?_r=0
7
“About the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland.” Soil Conservation
Service of Iceland,
http://land.is/about-soil-conservation-service-of-iceland/
By: Matthew Magann
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