Man and Nature; Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action

by George P. Marsh

"3. They multiply, by the expansion of their branches, the surfaces which are cooled by radiation.

"These three causes acting with greater or less force, we must, in the study of the climatology of a country, take into account the proportion between the area of the forests and the surface which is bared of trees and covered with herbs and grasses.

"We should be inclined to believe à priori, according to the foregoing considerations, that the clearing of the woods, by raising the temperature and increasing the dryness of the air, ought to react on climate. There is no doubt that, if the vast desert of the Sahara were to become wooded in the course of ages, the sands would cease to be heated as much as at the present epoch, when the mean temperature is twenty-nine degrees [centigrade, = 85° Fahr.]. In that case, the ascending currents of warm air would cease, or be less warm, and would not contribute, by descending in our latitudes, to soften the climate of Western Europe. Thus the clearing of a great country may react on the climates of regions more or less remote from it.

"The observations by Boussingault leave no doubt on this point. This writer determined the mean temperature of wooded and of cleared points, under the same latitude, and at the same elevation above the sea, in localities comprised between the eleventh degree of north and the fifth degree of south latitude, that is to say, in the portion of the tropics nearest to the equator, and where radiation tends powerfully during the night to lower the temperature under a sky without clouds."[154]

The result of these observations, which has been pretty generally adopted by physicists, is that the mean temperature of cleared land in the tropics appears to be about one degree centigrade, or a little less than two degrees of Fahrenheit, above that of the forest. On page 147 of the volume just cited, Becquerel argues that, inasmuch as the same and sometimes a greater difference is found in favor of the open ground, at points within the tropics so elevated as to have a temperate or even a polar climate, we must conclude that the forests in Northern America exert a refrigerating influence equally powerful. But the conditions of the soil are so different in the two regions compared, that I think we cannot, with entire confidence, reason from the one to the other, and it is much to be desired that observations be made on the summer and winter temperature of both the air and the ground in the depths of the North American forests, before it is too late.[155]

INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH.

a. As Inorganic Matter.

The most important influence of the forest on climate is, no doubt, that which it exercises on the humidity of the air and the earth, and this climatic action it exerts partly as dead, partly as living matter. By its interposition as a curtain between the sky and the ground, it intercepts a large proportion of the dew and the lighter showers, which would otherwise moisten the surface of the soil, and restores it to the atmosphere by evaporation; while in heavier rains, the large drops which fall upon the leaves and branches are broken into smaller ones, and consequently strike the ground with less mechanical force, or are perhaps even dispersed into vapor without reaching it.[156] As a screen, it prevents the access of the sun's rays to the earth, and, of course, an elevation of temperature which would occasion a great increase of evaporation. As a mechanical obstruction, it impedes the passage of air currents over the ground, which, as is well known, is one of the most efficient agents in promoting evaporation and the refrigeration resulting from it.[157] In the forest, the air is almost quiescent, and moves only as local changes of temperature affect the specific gravity of its particles. Hence there is often a dead calm in the woods when a furious blast is raging in the open country at a few yards' distance. The denser the forest—as for example, where it consists of spike-leaved trees, or is thickly intermixed with them—the more obvious is its effect, and no one can have passed from the field to the wood in cold, windy weather, without having remarked it.[158]

The vegetable mould, resulting from the decomposition of leaves and of wood, carpets the ground with a spongy covering which obstructs the evaporation from the mineral earth below, drinks up the rains and melting snows that would otherwise flow rapidly over the surface and perhaps be conveyed to the distant sea, and then slowly gives out, by evaporation, infiltration, and percolation, the moisture thus imbibed. The roots, too, penetrate far below the superficial soil, conduct the water along their surface to the lower depths to which they reach, and thus serve to drain the superior strata and remove the moisture out of the reach of evaporation.