"Icelanders want more forests"

Viðtal við Þröst Eysteinsson í kanadíska dagblaðinu The Globe & Mail

Þann 3. maí s.l. birtist viðtal við Dr. Þröst Eysteinsson, fagmálastjóra Skógræktar ríkisins, í kanadíska dagblaðinu ?The Globe & Mail?. Hér neðanmáls er viðtalið birt í heild.

The Globe and Mail er eina landsmálablað Kanadamanna, með höfuðstöðvar sínar í Winnipeg í Manitoba og er um leið víðlesnasta dagblað Kanada. Viðtalið var tekið í tilefni af því að blaðamanninum hafði borist þau tíðindi, að til stæði að senda fræ af norður-amerískri kastaníu (Castanea dentata) til reynsluræktunar á Íslandi.

Náttúrlegt útbreiðslusvæði þessarar kastaníutegundar í Kanada er bundið við syðsta hluta Ontarío-fylkis. Þar til fyrir einni öld var kastanían ein af einkennistrjátegundum laufskógabeltis austanverðrar Norður-Ameríku og gat náð allt að 40 m hæð og miklum sverleika (sjá mynd). En þá barst til álfunnar kastaníusýkin (Endothia parasitica) frá Asíu og eyddi að mestu skógum þessarar tegundar í álfunni. Í dag ná tré þessarar tegundar sjaldnast meiri hæð en 10 metrum áður en sýkin drepur meginstofninn, en trén geta haldið lífi með nýjum rótaskotum og stúfsprotum.

Nánari upplýsingar um kastaníu og kastaníusýkina:
http://ncnatural.com/NCNatural/trees/chestnut.html

Will a tree grow in Iceland?

The Vikings wiped out the woods a thousand years ago. Now, the country is hoping to reforest the land with such species as chestnuts and Douglas firs from Canada. MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT reports

By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT; Saturday, May 3, 2003 - Page F9

When the Vikings settled in Iceland more than 1,100 years ago, their selection of the country"s name was something of a misnomer.

The island in the middle of the North Atlantic wasn"t really a land of ice and snow. It boasted extensive forests composed entirely of stands of birch trees and covering 30 per cent of the area. Glaciers, by contrast, occupied less than 10 per cent.

But within three centuries of their arrival in 874, the Vikings had obliterated these forests.

"The people who settled here, the so-called Vikings coming from Norway, were agriculturalists and they began by burning down the forests to create farmland and grazing land for their cattle and their sheep," says Throstur Eysteinsson, deputy director of the Iceland Forest Service.

Under this relentless pressure, forest cover fell dramatically to less than 1 per cent. The lack of trees contributed to Iceland having some of the most severe land degradation in Europe and one of the first areas of the world to experience the modern plague of deforestation, a thousand years before other parts of the planet.

If Iceland were at a more southerly latitude and had less rainfall, it would have become a desert-like dustbowl because as its tree cover and other vegetation were removed, much of its soil just blew away.

Scientists estimate that Iceland"s deforestation and soil erosion have released six billion tonnes of carbon since settlement, about the same amount that currently enters the atmosphere each year from the burning of fossil fuels.

(Carbon is locked into place in live trees and organic material in soil; when the trees die and rot and the soil blows away, the carbon is released.)

The modern-day descendants of the early settlers are now trying to recreate the forest landscape once felled by Viking axes.

"Icelanders want more trees, want more forests," Mr. Eysteinsson says. "Even with plantings and some regeneration of birch trees in the last century, we still live in practically a treeless land."

The amount of forest in Iceland has crept up from its nadir to 1.4 per cent of its land area through tree plantings and natural regeneration. Mr. Eysteinsson says the hope is to nearly double this amount over the next 40 years.

Currently, only limited cuttings have been allowed from the country"s national forests, with the wood used for fuel and small crafts. If the reforestation efforts are successful, Iceland may have a commercial forestry industry in about five decades.

Part of the success of the reforestation program will depend on the trees selected for planting.

The only tree that naturally managed to reach Iceland since the last ice age was the downey birch, a variety that also grows in Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere in Northern Europe. Tree species in North America were too far away from Iceland to gain a foothold.

The downey birch is a hardy tree, but it has drawbacks. It grows slowly in Iceland and seldom reaches more than 15 metres, much smaller than forest trees elsewhere.

To create a more varied forest with faster-growing trees, Icelanders have scoured the world for trees that might thrive in their unusual climate of short, cool summers and long, mild winters. Over the past 100 years, researchers have experimented with more than 500 different species, and have found a handful -- about 20 -- that can thrive.

They are finding that some trees native to Alberta and British Columbia, such as sitka spruce and Engelmann spruce, seem to grow well, and they have recently decided to take a flier on a rare more southerly tree, the American chestnut, from an Ontario source. They are also experimenting with Douglas fir from 20 different B.C. sites.

Iceland owes its quirky climate to its location. Perched near the Arctic Circle and encircled by the relatively warm waters of the Gulf Stream, it has a mild climate unusual for such a northerly latitude.

About the only similar climatic area in North America is northern British Columbia and southern Alaska. But in an odd arboreal twist, Icelanders have found that some species native to southerly, mountainous areas, such as Colorado and the Alps, also do well.

They have even managed to grow a tree from an area that is the antithesis of Iceland, a species from sunny, arid Arizona, the bristlecone pine.

Mr. Eysteinsson says that, with trees, "you never can tell beforehand" which will do well.

The American chestnuts are being grown from seeds supplied by Ontario"s Grand River Conservation Authority.

Staff at the authority"s nursery were surprised when they received the request, sent to them because of a view that any chestnut growing in Ontario must have lots of frost tolerance. Normally, the authority doesn"t send plants much farther away than Kingston, let alone to a country most people assume from its name is too inhospitable for trees.

"I didn"t think actually that there were trees in Iceland," says Bruce Graham, manager of the authority"s tree nursery.

Early in March, he mailed 60 of the brownish-grey seeds by courier to Iceland, where they will first be grown in greenhouses and eventually transplanted outside at five sites with different climate conditions.

The idea for sending the seeds to Iceland came from a U.S. consulting engineer who worked in Iceland and suggested that they try some chestnuts, a tree that has been almost wiped out in North America by an accidentally introduced blight. Establishing a reservoir of chestnuts in Iceland would put them out of reach of the blight and preserve their genetic material.

Chestnuts make a desirable tree because they grow fast, have beautiful wood, and produce bountiful harvests of edible nuts.

Mr. Eysteinsson says he doubts that the chestnuts will be hardy enough to survive in forests, but he thinks some of Iceland"s gardeners and homeowners will be keen to plant one of the exotic Canadian trees.

"Lots of gardeners are interested in a curiosity. If the chestnut lives here, that is what it would be," he says.

Martin Mittelstaedt is The Globe and Mail"s environment reporter.