Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England

I have grown up in new england and studied the biological sciences for 20 years and Tom Wessel knowledge and wonderful insight to the natural world is amazing. the book is a wonderful read and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the outdoors and natures beauty.

This book provides an excellent introduction to forest ecology. Wessels begins each chapter with an etching that captures a typical feature of northern forest. He then guides us to understanding what one can learn from the etching through asking key questions and making more detailed observations. The book focuses on central New England forests, which he defines as reaching roughly from the Southern half of Vermont to the Northern half of Massachusetts, and stretching eastwards to the coast of Maine. The book will help even beginners understand more about the forests surrounding them, although it helps if readers can at least recognize a beech tree from a maple or a pine before they start. The book is full of so many details that one reading through it is not enough; this is a book to dip into over and over again as one explores the forest. The book includes a number of useful appendices, covering such varied topics as a chronology of New England history, key kinds of evidence to look for in the woods, common woody and non-woody plants, a glossary, and a bibliography.

This book is a guide to understanding clues that explain the varied forest patterns of Central New England. Each chapter focuses on a single form of disturbance - either man made or natural - that impacts the region's forests. The chapters focus on logging, pasture abandonment, fire, beaver activity, blow downs, forest blights, topography and substrate and their impact on the plants located near these disturbances.Each chapter discusses the disturbance and then in a section entitled "A Look Back" the disturbance is related to the site's natural history. This new way of seeing a forest and its history adds to my walks in the woods. I feel a connection, a reverence, an enhancement and an inclusion that was not part of my previous walks. Although most of my hikes are in the Green Mountains of Vermont, I am convinced this process of reading the forest can be applied to any woodland in North America.

This is a fascinating piece of writing, beautifully illustrated, and full of thought-provoking ideas. Wessels does an excellent job of leading the reader through a historical/natural historical approach to understanding portions of the New England landscape. The book is a mixture of "how to" guide and a basket of intriguing facts. My one quibble is that the author is still fixated on a somewhat '70's view of "ecosystems" and "succession" -although he does allow a refreshing degree of indeterminism to creep in on occasion. Other than that this is a must read for any regional ecologist!

I'm a Registered Maine Guide and self harvest my forest land in Maine. Needless to say, I spend a fair amount of time in the forest. Tom Wessels book has opened up a whole new world to me: the same woods that I thought I new so well! Incredible book. Thanks Tom