Subject: Re: threat of exotics in the natural landscape

From: [email-masked] ("K N and P J Harris")
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 20:36:21 GMT

Effects on landscape,
Apart from intrusion of exotics there may be a lot of hogwash talked 
about damage to landscapes by "modern man".
I recently attended a lecture based on a photographer returning to areas 
of Derbyshire in the UK that had been photographed in 1856 by a party of 
keen photographers. He had located the sites at which they had taken 
photographs and taken his own for comparison. The most striking 
impression that came across was the great INCREASE in tree growth in the 
intervening 140 years in nearly all the views.
 
 It struck me that this could be a very fruitful avenue of environmental 
investigation. In the UK and US there was a huge explosion in 
photographic recording in the 1870's and 1880's but I have never seen 
this used as evidence of environmental change. (It could be taken even 
further back by using landscape paintings).
 
  Just a thought,
  
   Peter Harris,
   Department of Soil Science,
   The University of Reading, UK.