Fortunately, from the beginning of the 19th century, people became aware of the serious environmental problems and started to control the situation.
- 1899 to 1950: Beginnings and Protection
The earliest organised forestry group, Planting Pine Stand at Thingvellir, was founded in 1899 by three Danes, Carl H. Ryder, Carl V. Prytz, Christian E. Flensborg, who got together and initiated the conservation action of helping to readjust the forest and soil. From 1907 to 1945, 80 percent of residents lived in rural areas. The main land was used for grazing sheep and dairy farming. What made people notice the environment problems were the frequent dust storms in lowland areas that affected fishing. These also damaged large farming areas and woodlands; the former were at risk of becoming uninhabitable and the latter, denudation. People started to protect the key woodlands from grazing, and tried to think of ways to stop the soil erosion. In 1950, scientists tried different species of trees, including pine trees, which are a strong group that easily grow in different types of land. Those worked well. Pine trees grew quickly and the land recovered faster compared with the native birch forest. However, the pine tree is an invasive species, and it caused problems to other vegetation. Another concern was that forest fires easily happen in pine tree forests, besides the fact that because pine trees can survive well in fire but not other vegetation, they use fire to outcompete other plant life (Vogt 2013)
[12]. Because of this problem, scientists are now growing more native birch trees instead of invasive species. At the same time, the woodlands now exclude sheep, an exclusion that is still necessary today for all afforestation areas because of the uncontrolled summer grazing.
- 1950 to 1990: Gaining experience with planting
Beginning in the 1940s, better and larger machinery are available, allowing intense development in agriculture and increasing number of livestock. Still, more and more land is needed for production. However, without fertile and thick soil, grass and crops cannot grow well, so people began to revive the eroded areas for production. Scientists imported a variety of grasses and set up researches for the reclamation. From 1950, planting trees was the main solution for both the government and the public for afforestation. According to the IFS (Iceland Forest Service), "Planting by forestry societies and the IFS increased greatly during the 1950's, reaching over 1.5 million seedlings per year during 1960-'62" (IFS 2013)
[18]. Although the planting declined after 1963, 500,000 to 1 million seedlings were planted each year till 1989. Throughout this time, scientists still tried to plant different non-native tree species that could grow on Iceland and recover the land.
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| Birch plantation |
- 1990 to 2009: Increased afforestation
Large scale afforestation associated with energy development began in 1990, and roughly 4 million seedlings were planted per year, achieving a high of about 6 million seedlings annually from 2007 to 2009. At this time, birch forests, which are the native forests, showed their advantages over other exotic species and increased their proportion in planting; nearly 1/3 of the seedlings planted consisted of birch trees (IFS 2013)
[18].
Every tide has its ebb. In 2005, though public funding for seedlings reached a maximum, Iceland encountered a serious financial crisis in 2008, leading to dramatic cuts in funding. Truth is, public funding for forestry in 2013 was only half of the funding received in 2005. The big reduction caused a decrease in planting, as well as the cessation of all related business and research work. The Icelandic Krona, the currency of Iceland, collapsed because of the economic crush, which led to more expensive imports, including wood; domestic wood prices jumped in timber sellers' eyes. IFS states that, "Thinning and timber sales by the IFS increased greatly in 2009, again in 2010, and are set to increase even more in 2013," which makes afforestation more difficult at this period.
It is believed that 40 to 50 years down the line, Iceland’s forests will double: from 1.3% to 2.5% (Scand 2003)
[2]. A new forestry strategy came in November 2006, and the five main areas of emphasis are the following (IFS 2006)
[18]:
1. Building up a forest resource
2. Forest utilization, value and innovation
3. Society, access and health
4. Environmental quality and biodiversity
5. Climate change
After over a century of forestry activity, besides the positive developments that can be measured, people now have more experience and better ideas on how to rehabilitate Iceland’s forests, including how to organize timber usage and sales to make sustainable decisions. People have come back to Gifford Pinchot's idea of forest service that proposes the "multiple use" concept for managing federal lands (Krosby 2014)[
11]. The strategy is still doing well now because forestation is by far the best way to repair the eroded land as well as change the productive ecosystems, providing habitats to other species that increase biodiversity and mitigate climate change in the process.
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The total forest cover and the total area restoration.
While people focus on reforestation in recent years, the most apparent habitat that has been recovered is actually the grassland. One reason is that
people still grazing livestock now and grassland is the main food
resource for these livestock. |
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