Photo by author. Princess pines in snow.

From my home in a small New Hampshire college town, it takes a shorter amount of time for me to walk into the woods than to my nearest Dunkin’ Donuts (approximately 3 minutes to the first and five to the second). This pairing exemplifies the commonly held perception of the New England landscape in a sentence: forests and Dunkin’. But it is the ever-present forests of this region I am much more preoccupied with. Being so close to the forest has always felt like a gift to me. I’ve spent countless hours wandering along the river trail, photographing the princess pines silhouetted against the snowy ground, cataloguing the tiny lichens populating the sides of birch trunks I used for a seat, and marking the progress of a beaver family bringing down a red maple so wide I can’t wrap my arms around. This forest is my home. I thought I knew it inside and out. But a new book, Forests Adrift: Currents Shaping the Future of  Northeastern Trees, opened my eyes to even greater complexities at work in these forests.

“I have not been able to entirely let go of the emotional tug of the primeval and have no intention of forsaking the appeal of wilderness, but I am no longer able to walk in any forest without recognizing that humans have shaped and will continue to shape what I see,” writes Dr. Charles Canham in his book Forests Adrift. This sentence may seem controversial at first. Even I, a born New Englander, had not realized the extent to which human activities have impacted the forests of the Northeast. Yet Canham does not view human activity as at odds with a vibrant forest ecosystem. Humans are simply another part of the story of forests. In Forests Adrift the author presents a stunningly concise yet detailed account of ecological research in northeastern forests, along with the pressures and challenges that shape their future.

Book cover photo courtesy of Jstor.

This is not a memoir, like Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl, which pulls you into the mechanics of paleobiology only after hooking you on Jahren’s life. This personal history is likely what propelled Lab Girl to such mainstream appeal, landing it on numerous Best Books of the Year lists. In contrast, Canham offers only a few scattered anecdotes about growing up in New York and his long-term research site in the forests of Connecticut. It is clear he is an authority on the topic though. Dr. Charles Canham has been studying northeastern forests his entire adult life, the last 30 years of which was spent at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in New York’s Hudson River Valley. This background gives him plenty of personal material to draw on. Canham’s effortless weaving in of first person accounts and short anecdotes keeps the science engaging.

From invasive forests pests, to white-tailed deer, to air pollution, Forests Adrift surveys the various ecological and human factors influencing northeastern forests. There are some alarming examples, and Canham clearly illustrates the vastly different time scales that forests operate on. He describes how, in modeling a potential future where 95 percent of hemlocks die as a result of the hemlock woolly adelgid pest, “it can take a thousand years, that is, four to five generations, for hemlock to regain its former abundance.” Our actions today will shape the forests of the next millennia.

This book should be read not just as a deep dive into the future of New England forests but as an argument for greater engagement between scientists, policymakers, and citizens. In chapter 10, Canham praises the recent work of the Cary Institute’s Gary Lovett and his collaborators on invasive pests in northeastern forests. They developed the Tree-SMART Trade proposal, which advocates for specific policies and practices that could help slow the spread of invasive pests. Canham declares that such blurring of the lines between science and policy is necessary. Ecology, particularly with the impacts of climate change, cannot be done in a vacuum.  

Photo by author. Ashuelot River Trail in New Hampshire.

It is in the opening paragraph of the last chapter in which I connect most strongly with Canham. “If I had to trace my preoccupation with forest dynamics back to a single event, it would be to a walk I took in the woods of the Hudson Highlands as a teenager…I noticed that one of the trees was growing out of the old stone foundation of a long-gone farmhouse. What I had naively assumed to be the tranquility of an ancient forest hid a deep, complex history,” he recounts. Most readers have no interest in turning a walk in the woods into a career in forest ecology, but the simpler meaning—of finding greater complexity and depth in things we may have taken for granted as a child— is a universal experience.  

Although I have no such singular moment of clarity that determined my interest in forest ecology, Canham’s recollection resonated with me. There were countless family hikes through the forests of New England when we happened upon crumbling stone walls, or sometimes the faint parallel divots in the forest floor delineating an old logging road. Those moments are surprisingly magical, as though you’ve stumbled upon some secret history. 

One of Canham’s most striking revelations is how the historical context of the forests is essential to understanding their future. This may seem obvious, but science is often obsessed with novelty, the next discovery or the latest findings. Forests Adrift begins with an accounting of the recent past, the 400 years since European settlement that saw the clearing of nearly 85 percent of New England forests. It continues to the geologic past, 10,000 years ago and earlier when considerable movements of different plant species can be unearthed from pollen records in sediment cores taken from the bottom of lakes. Canham’s measured tracing of how the past has shaped northeastern forests helps to ground his explanations of current research. 

Forests Adrift is decidedly a book about how complex trees are, yet it is surprisingly readable and incredibly informative. There are moments when Canham gets quite excited about the particular topic he is describing. In Chapter 2 for instance, he uses a detailed overview of ecosystem modeling to explain the importance of creating more links between modeling and field research in forest ecology. But the tone remains informative without slipping into condescension. 

Forests Adrift ends with more uncertainty than when it started. But this may be Canham’s point. We must learn to live with uncertainty. Northeastern forests are changing, but what their future is—that’s not so easily predictable. Canham declares, “But the fact remains that there is enormous uncertainty when it comes to the future of our forests as well as very real limits on our ability to forecast change more than a few decades into the future.” Despite this clear-eyed description of the limitations of science, Canham is remarkably hopeful. It is precisely his ability to make science accessible that makes Forests Adrift such a uniquely compelling account of an ecosystem. Science does not have all the answers, but that does not mean we should stop asking questions.