More than half of Europe's forests have disappeared over the past 6,000 years as a result of growing demand for agricultural land and the use of wood as a source of fuel, according to a study by the University of Plymouth.
Pollen analysis from more than a thousand different regions showed that more than two-thirds of Central and Northern Europe was once covered with trees. Today they cover about a third, although in the western and coastal regions, including the UK and Ireland, the decline is much larger. In some areas, the forest area has decreased to 10% or less.
The situation has started to improve somewhat with the discovery of new fuels and construction methods, as well as environmental initiatives such as the National Forest and Northern Forest projects announced by the UK government in January.
“Most countries are in forest transition, and the UK and Ireland hit their forest floor some 200 years ago. Other countries in Europe have not yet reached this point, and in parts of Scandinavia, where there is no such dependence on agriculture, the forest still predominates. However, forest loss is a dominant feature of the landscape ecology of Europe in the second half of the current interglacial period, with implications for the carbon cycle, ecosystem functioning and biodiversity,”said study lead author Neil Roberts.
The study, which also involved experts from Sweden, Germany, France, Estonia and Switzerland, sought to establish how the nature of Europe's forests has changed over the past 11,000 years.
Scientists have combined three different methods of analyzing pollen data from the European Palynological Database and determined that the forest cover has increased from 60% 11,000 years ago to 80% 6,000 years ago. However, the introduction of modern farming methods during the Neolithic period caused a gradual decline, which accelerated towards the end of the Bronze Age and continued until today.
According to Professor Roberts, this is one of the most surprising moments of the study, as logging can be considered a relatively recent phenomenon, but 20% of England's forests disappeared by the end of the Bronze Age 3000 years ago.
“About 8000 years ago, a squirrel could travel through trees from Lisbon to Moscow without touching the ground. The loss of forest may be viewed as a negative phenomenon, but some of our most valuable habitats have been created by clearing trees of space to grow grass and moorlands. Until 1940, many traditional farming practices did not harm wildlife and created habitats for many creatures,”he said, adding that the findings could be used to understand the impact of future forestry initiatives on habitat change.
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