An Appalachian Tragedy. Edited by Ayers, Hager & Little. Sierra Club Books.

The cover of the Sierra Club’s beautiful new book is a photo at dusk of sunset-lit mountain ridges, with the title "An Appalachian Tragedy -- Air Pollution and Tree Death in the Eastern Forest of North America." It is noted there that the editors are Harvard Ayers, Jenny Hager and Charles E. Little, who wrote the recent book "The Dying of the Trees." Also it states, "Photographs by Jenny Hager." The 216-page book contains over 200 marvelous photographs. Yet it is not just a $45 picture book for the front room or office display. The photographs and text tell the important story. To more widely tell the story, this beautiful and important book is available for just $15 from the NRDC., Suite 200, 1200 New York Ave, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.

The first startling photo covers both pages. It is puzzling. Then it is entirely explained, most poetically, in the next equally large photo -- a heart-wrenching photo. There follows four more superb photos restating, echoing the first and second. Then words and the book begins: title; contents; the forward, "The Cry of the Mountains."

"All along the Appalachian chain, from Maine to Georgia, trees are dying. Spruce and fir are dead along the ridges. Great swaths of sugar maple are in mortal decline. The butternut is nearly extinct, and hemlocks are in a desperate struggle for life against an insect that flourishes as air pollution worsens. Dogwoods... "are being ravaged by a fungus.

"Weakened by decades of air pollution that have brought acid rain, deadly smog, and excess nitrogen. and by cell-destroying ultra violet rays from a thinning ozone layer, the magnificent Appalachian forests are no longer able to fight off the bugs, blights, and bad weather that afflict forests everywhere....

"Yet relatively few people are aware of the ecological calamity, due in a large part to the efforts of the forest products industry and their advocates in government, to downplay the crisis, by manipulating statistics and confusing the issue."

An Appalachian Tragedy, this book, seeks to "set the record straight."

This Sierra Club book, timely and important, and widely available at just $15, is an ennobling environmental effort, but this reviewer reminds all that this book is based on the premise that forest health is poor. This premise should be thoroughly reviewed, for as the authors note in the above paragraph, many experts "downplay the crisis." This book addresses this factor specifically around or about on page 90 with some convincing detail, but by no means comprehensively. This book should raise a widespread concern that would bring about enough debate on the health of the eastern forest to bring more enlightenment and consensus to more people on this important subject.

This reviewer’s comments will end here with just the note that a more thorough description of the original forest would have been most appropriate. This was somewhat after all slighted, as the book was essentially written by several authors, and most just touched upon the nature of the eastern forest prior to its first logging and some upon its destruction. Also, more could have been said about the extent of barren streams after the loss of the Appalachian Brook Trout Ecosystem -- for they, like the flowering dogwood, are one of the most loved characteristics of these mountains. The eventual loss of the eastern hemlock too, would be most regrettable, with many impacts. We could to no extent convey to future generations what even today’s forest was like without these three. They are indicators of forest ecosystem health on which our own survival depends. It would be wise to keep them for their own sakes and our own.

Flip a few more pages, again, and a large photo of mountain ridges at dawn from Roan Mountain, NC begins the chapter "Along the Spine of Time." It is followed by another beautiful photo, equally as large, of a steep, mossy stream in Great Smokey Mountain National Park -- and more and more. There are more photos as the forest community is briefly described in "The Foundation of the Forest." Then the seasons and creatures of the forest are presented -- of which Man is a recent entry, and a growing plague as it turns out.

Next there is a chapter on the formation of the Appalachians from Newfoundland to Alabama. This history, millions of years old, is brought up to date with its origin, coal deposits, glacier periods, etc. Then like a great litany of monuments it names the great mountains and rivers and gorges and caves we know today. The forest vegetation of the rich coves and mountain tops and bogs, the animals (the 34 salamander species), the rare species, and the great biodiversity is described. Then Man’s settlement and exploitation of the land is detailed.

Then this same Man began to save what was left. In 1911 the Federal Weeks Act began the eastern national forests. As another indication of the public’s broadening regard for these damaged mountains, the Appalachian Trail was started.

The next chapter, "The Appalachian’s Last Stand," asks, "What’s happening?" "The answer is everywhere..." – moribund soil, declining ecosystem health by any measure, and tree death. Throughout the long Appalachian chain, regional air pollution and acid rain clearly emerge as today’s man-caused scourge of the land. There are the troubling photographs; the evidence of acid fog, dead trees, damaged trees, and ozone damage. "Autumn in July" shows the early browning of stressed forest stands. Disease and insect attack and even drought effects, are immediate causes of tree death, but these follow years of stress and decline by acid rain effects above and below ground.

If mountain elevation and slope and steep plunging streams are a characteristic of the Appalachians, so is its spring-time white bloom of flowering dogwood. There is a beautiful photo of these blossoms. It is reported that in Connecticut in the 1970s the dogwood trees began dying. Now, in some hard-hit areas like the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, they are gone. Preconditioning by acid rain for a disease is the cause. Dogwood loss should be recognized as a white flag of distress, if not surrender, of the Eastern Forest Ecosystem. Visibility is reduced by air pollution too. More people travel more to look at views that are disappearing in smog caused by their own travel. [Italics added by Editor to point up the irony here] With a photo of a beautiful sunset, the authors warn, "They are terrifying too, for they suggest a tragedy in the making unless we can resolutely and quickly reduce..." air pollution.

Then in a chapter, "In Changing Forests, a Search for Answers," a very qualified expert Forest Ecologist, Plant Physiologist and Pathologist, on the cutting edge of attempts to define forest health, writes about the development of this knowledge. Here air pollution is most clearly seen to be the cause of definite forest decline as its workings in eastern forests are elucidated. The detail is consistent, fascinating, and convincing.

"The Broken Web of Life" begins with a picture of a waterfall with blooming rhododendron, and another of a fallen log "functioning as a nurse-log." The question is asked, are there vital inter-connections holding ecosystems together, and is it more likely to be an eagle or an earthworm?

Acid rain acidifies streams and kills trout, other fish, and reduces other aquatic life. The author reports it has reduced earthworms in the forest soil by as much as 90% in large areas of Appalachia. Here micro-organisms and fungi are reduced and fallen leaves, even trees, are not turned to humus, and nutrients then are not being recycled.

A chapter, "Communities in Crisis," begins with a photo of a waterfall in Shenandoah National Park. The communities considered are those of salamanders and trout, and their decline in an era of acid rain. Park studies there and down to the Smokies show trout and other aquatic life to be reduced by acid rain. The author noted nutrient leaching and impoverishment and acidification of forest soils. Toxic metals are increasing.

This author also notes the increasing disease and death in our Flowering Dogwood -- in trees weakened by air pollution -- for ozone pollution is also a problem. The final "community" visited by this author is the spruce/fir ecosystem atop our highest mountains. The extensive fir mortality is shown as stark gray, still standing trunks. It began 30 years ago, now Red Spruce too are dying.

Later, with a beautiful photo of fall foliage, it is asked is this losing its brightness -- an effect of acid rain. It goes on, "...robbing the forest soils of vital nutrients. Alkaline chemicals have been so thoroughly leached from the soil that the forest trees have simply stopped growing. In fact, they haven’t grown for ten years. The effect of no growth, together with climate change, the impacts of tropospheric (low elevation) ozone, and increasing levels of ultra-violet B radiation put the forests of the Appalachians at risk -- along with the culture and economy they support."

In chapters, "A Culture at Risk," "The Last of the Hardwood Forests," and "Weathering the Storm," man’s life in the mountains today, retaining many things of the past, is described.

The last two chapters, "Call to Action" and "After Decades of Deception, a Time to Act," show us, first with the same marvelous photography, the many smoke-stack sources of air pollution. The conclusion is reached that "The weight of the evidence has long demonstrated that air pollution from power plants, smelters, factories, and automobiles is a major threat to the forests of the east."

"Despite all the evidence correlating widespread forest damage with steep increases in air pollution in the post World War II Era, industry and many government scientists remain in a state of denial about the crisis into the 1990s -- and indeed, many still do to this day. Unwilling to pay the cost of reducing the destructive emissions from power plants and auto vehicles, industry invested instead in producing evidence that cast doubt in the emerging science and in lobbying activities to prevent effective government action."

The delays have been enormous -- two decades! Time is running out. Further they note facts now indicate that though the Clean Air Act’s goal of reducing sulfur emissions may succeed, those reductions are not sufficient to protect the Eastern Forest.

The book’s purpose is to alert citizens to these facts and to make them aware of the fact that trees are still dying. It is a powerful statement, convincing, and it is a beautiful book. By making such a book available for $15, it should very effectively convey this important message.

My opinion is that we have precious few scientists these days (including most biologists) who are, indeed, qualified to make pronouncements about environmental "truths." Many are influenced either directly or indirectly by the corruption of corporate dollars. And the science of the environment is still in its infancy. Reductionistic science used in this regard is not only passe, but its conservative and narrow approach is not only inadequate to the task, but is dangerous as long as a "Precautionary Principle" (see August 98 Voice) is not in place in terms of the corporate use of chemicals, natural resources and their by-products. Editor.]