ABSTRACT
European settlement of the Northeast initiated large-scale forest clearing and conversion of forests to cultivated fields and pastureland. The conversion of the precolonial forest began in the 1600s in Massachusetts. By the 1870s, forests and grasslands in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota had been replaced by cultivated fields of corn, oats, wheat, and hay (Knox, 2001; Whitney, 1994). This process also involved the extensive clearing and draining of forested and prairie wetlands and coastal marshes (Box 7.1) (Carlson and Fowler, 1979; McCorvie and Lant, 1993). “Few areas on the Earth’s surface have experienced as extensive and dramatic a change as the mid-latitude forests and grasslands of eastern North America” [in such a short period of time] (Whitney, 1994). Clearing for agriculture constituted the greatest disturbance since the retreat of the North American glacial ice sheets approximately 12,000 to 15,000 years ago.
