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The trees come back. 150 years ago, for example, Yosemite valley had many fewer trees (see this painting, as an example: http://www.timkenmuseum.org/collection/
by ktRolster 10y ago
The trees come back. 150 years ago, for example, Yosemite valley had many fewer trees (see this painting, as an example: http://www.timkenmuseum.org/collection/american/cho-looke-yosemite-fall http://www.timkenmuseum.org/collection/american/cho-looke-yo... ). Not just in America, I was visiting some homesteads in Scotland, and they said 70 years ago, the trees were all gone, but they'd grown back.
- Someone 10y agoFor Scotland and many other parts of Europe, forests started coming back both because forests were (re)planted and because we started burning coal and oil instead of wood and stopped building wooden houses, ships, etc. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04... has a nice gif showing forest area increase. For Yosemite, my guess would be a different cause: the area depicted had fairly recently seen a forest fire.
- ktRolster 10y agoThe area depicted was kept down by native americans, who preferred the open fields for hunting and living in.
- dredmorbius 10y agoThe US was consuming massive amounts of wood in the 1860s, much of it for fuel. Coal didn't surpass wood until the 1880s. England switched to coal after deforesting the British Isles for glass, iron, and ship manufacture. One kilogram of iron requires 80 kg of source fuelwood, as charcoal.