Ecological and Historical Evidence of Anthropogenic Forest Transformations in Eastern Cape Breton Island

• Main Authors: O. T. Bouman, N. Vaninetti, G. E. M. Williams, D. B. Mccorquodale, D. B. Mccorquodale Are Assis
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: ecotone; forest structure; settlement his- tory; wood; Breton Island
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.663.889; http://www.cbucommons.ca/science/biology/images/uploads/BoumanetalJSFCB_foresthistory.pdf

ABSTRACT. Farmers cleared approximately one third of settled forest areas within the boreal-temperate ecotone of eastern Cape Breton Island in the 19th century. Temperate hardwoods were prime settlement areas but land ownership patterns and technological dependence of saw mill-ing on stream waters also influenced the clearing and fragmentation of hardwood areas. In the 20th century, boreal tree species invaded aban-doned fields thus confounding the natural edaphic-topographic speci-ficity of forest vegetation in ecotonal landscapes. The anthropogenic expansion of boreal tree species sustained comparable levels of wood production while reducing compositional and structural diversity of the tree stratum on original hardwood sites. Industrial forestry accelerated