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Deforestation during the Roman period

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way

Deforestation during the Roman period was a result of the geographical expansion of the Roman Empire, with its increased population, large-scale agriculture, and unprecedented economic development. Roman expansion marks the transition in the Mediterranean from prehistory (around 1,000 BC) to the historical period beginning around 500 BC. Earth sustained a few million people 8,000 years ago and was still fundamentally pristine,[1] but Rome drove human development in Western Europe and was a leading contributor of the deforestation around the Mediterranean.[2]

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Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of the Western Roman Empire to Germanic kings conventionally marks the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Because of these events, along with the gradual Hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire, historians distinguish the medieval Roman Empire that remained in the Eastern provinces as the Byzantine Empire.

Classical demography

Classical demography

Classical demography refers to the study of human demography in the Classical period. It often focuses on the absolute number of people who were alive in civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea between the Bronze Age and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, but in recent decades historians have been more interested in trying to analyse demographic processes such as the birth and death rates or the sex ratio of ancient populations. The period was characterized by an explosion in population with the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations followed by a steep decline caused by economic and social disruption, migrations, and a return to primarily subsistence agriculture. Demographic questions play an important role in determining the size and structure of the economy of Ancient Greece and the Roman economy.

Prehistory

Prehistory

Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.

Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only place known in the universe where life has originated and found habitability. While Earth may not contain the largest volumes of water in the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water, extending over 70.8% of the Earth with its ocean, making Earth an ocean world. Earth's polar regions currently retain most of all other water with large sheets of ice covering ocean and land, dwarfing Earth's groundwater, lakes, rivers and atmospheric water. Land, consisting of continents and islands, extends over 29.2% of the Earth and is widely covered by vegetation. Below Earth's surface material lies Earth's crust consisting of several slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth's liquid outer core generates a magnetic field that shapes the magnetosphere of Earth, largely deflecting destructive solar winds and cosmic radiation.

Deforestation

Deforestation

Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, a half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute.

Causes

Housing and building

The most basic building supply in the Roman time period was wood. Trees were cut to house increasing populations throughout the Roman Empire. While some Mediterranean houses were built with brick and stone, roof structures, covered with tiles, as well as the floors in multistory apartment buildings were often made of wood.[3]

It is estimated that at one point the Roman Empire had a population of 56.8 million people and an estimated one million or more in Rome alone (a population that was not matched in size in Europe until London in the 19th century).[4]

Fuel

Wood was essential fuel in industries like mining, smelting, and the making of ceramics.[3]

Agriculture

Roman harvesting machine from Trier, Germany
Roman harvesting machine from Trier, Germany

Agriculture was the economic base for the Roman Empire. With an ever-increasing population, the clearing of land for crops was a primary cause of initial deforestation. Human hands gave way to iron ploughs and harvesting machines, and the use of animals to clear dense forests to utilize the rich topsoil.[5]

Agriculture produced commodities that contributed to the economic prosperity of the Romans, who relied on the crops produced from the slaves/landowners. As a result, in 111 BC Roman law allowed anyone who occupied public land of up to 20 acres (81,000 m2) to keep it, provided it was brought into cultivation.[6] This type of policy created widespread clearing and reflected the importance of agriculture, not only to the affluent, but also to citizens, to the military and to merchants engaged in trade with other regions.

In Chapter 5 ("Roman Soil Erosion") of the book by Way of the Soil by Guy Theodore Wrench, the author describes the devastating effects which widespread deforestation and the subsequent overworking of the land to grow increasing amounts of grain for the Roman Empire's burgeoning population had on the land:

Animals and overgrazing

A major contributor to the environmental degradation and barrier to the regeneration of forests was the grazing of domestic animals. Animals grazed and destroyed land areas unsuitable for cultivation.[7] The consumption of hillside plants and young trees caused erosion, stripping hillsides of soils and eventually exposing bare rock. Silt and gravel would wash down off the hills and mountains creating other problems such as flooding, siltation, and filled-in marshlands.[8]

Military

With natural resources dwindling, maintaining a strong Roman army for the conquering of new lands was vital. Military campaigns devastated the countryside. Some farmers were forced to fight instead of caring for the land. When natural resources were depleted in already occupied regions of the Roman Empire, the military was sent to not only to defend lands of the Romans, but also to accumulate other areas of interest that had a plentiful supply of timber to accommodate the needs of the Roman economy.

Julius Caesar himself ordered troops to cut down forests to prevent sneak attacks.[9] Deforestation ensured that the forests could not provide cover and camouflage for Rome's enemies. The size of the standing army was about 300,000 and increased to 600,000 toward the late Empire period.[10] Roman legions deforested areas where they camped or marched to reduce the cover where their adversaries could hide and or mount a sneak attack.[10] The military utilized these resources and built fortresses, along with tools and transportation to carry supplies where needed.

Shipbuilding

Shipbuilding was a major contributor to deforestation and was of great economic and military significance. The importance attached to the supply of timber for building ships cannot be denied; ships were crucial to the burgeoning economic life of the Mediterranean, and sea power was vital in the exercise of political control.[11] Warships had priority over merchant vessels in competition for materials.[12]

Thousands of ships were built during this classical period. At times of war, hundreds could be built within a month. This put tremendous pressure on supply of usable timbers. Consequently, one effect of shipbuilding centers was the scarcity of timber in their immediate areas. Then, after immediate areas were depleted of wood resources, the transportation of wood timbers from other areas was the next option. Transportation was expensive, but increasing numbers of ships were needed to maintain naval dominance.

Urbanization

Early urbanization of Rome and surrounding areas was focused around the ability to obtain natural resources. Lowland areas and areas close to water transports were highly urbanized first, but as population increased along with trade and manufacturing, imperial expansion and colonization of conquered territories was needed. The environment underwent drastic degradation as pollution from the burning of fuelwood filled the air and smelters that used wood as fuel transmitted heavy metals into the atmosphere.

The creation of large cities contributed to deforestation in the classical world. Overcrowding forced citizens to move to the hillsides where forests once stood to build their homes.[10]

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Brick

Brick

A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term brick denotes a unit primarily composed of clay, but is now also used informally to denote units made of other materials or other chemically cured construction blocks. Bricks can be joined using mortar, adhesives or by interlocking. Bricks are usually produced at brickworks in numerous classes, types, materials, and sizes which vary with region, and are produced in bulk quantities.

List of largest cities throughout history

List of largest cities throughout history

This article lists the largest human settlements in the world over time, as estimated by historians, from 7000 BC when the largest populated place in the world was a proto-city in the Ancient Near East with a population of about 1,000–2,000 people, to the year 2000 when the largest urban area was Tokyo with 26 million. Alexandria, Rome, or Baghdad may have been the first city to have 1,000,000 people, as early as 100 BC or as late as 925 AD. They were later surpassed by Constantinople, Chang'an, Kaifeng, Hangzhou, Jinling, Beijing, Edo, London, and New York, among others, before Tokyo took the crown in the mid-20th century. As of 2020, the Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37.393 million residents.

Europe

Europe

Europe is a continent comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits.

London

London

London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a 50-mile (80 km) estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as Londinium and retains its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which since 1965 has largely comprised Greater London, which is governed by 33 local authorities and the Greater London Authority.

Mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials from the Earth and other astronomical objects. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a laboratory or factory. Ores recovered by mining include metals, coal, oil shale, gemstones, limestone, chalk, dimension stone, rock salt, potash, gravel, and clay. Ore must be a rock or mineral that contains valuable constituent, can be extracted or mined and sold for profit. Mining in a wider sense includes extraction of any non-renewable resource such as petroleum, natural gas, or even water.

Ceramic

Ceramic

A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain, and brick.

Germany

Germany

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second-most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between the Baltic and North seas to the north, and the Alps to the south; it covers an area of 357,022 square kilometres (137,847 sq mi), with a population of over 84 million within its 16 constituent states. Germany borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, and France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the west. The nation's capital and most populous city is Berlin and its main financial centre is Frankfurt; the largest urban area is the Ruhr.

Agriculture in ancient Rome

Agriculture in ancient Rome

Roman agriculture describes the farming practices of ancient Rome, during a period of over 1000 years. From humble beginnings, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire expanded to rule much of Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East and thus comprised many agricultural environments of which the Mediterranean climate of dry, hot summers and cool, rainy winter was the most common. Within the Mediterranean area, a triad of crops were most important: grains, olives, and grapes.

Plough

Plough

A plough or plow is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or steel frame with a blade attached to cut and loosen the soil. It has been fundamental to farming for most of history. The earliest ploughs had no wheels; such a plough was known to the Romans as an aratrum. Celtic peoples first came to use wheeled ploughs in the Roman era.

Commodity

Commodity

In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.

Environmental degradation

Environmental degradation

Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as quality of air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems; habitat destruction; the extinction of wildlife; and pollution. It is defined as any change or disturbance to the environment perceived to be deleterious or undesirable.

Grazing

Grazing

In agriculture, grazing is a method of animal husbandry whereby domestic livestock are allowed outdoors to roam around and consume wild vegetations in order to convert the otherwise indigestible cellulose within grass and other forages into meat, milk, wool and other animal products, often on land unsuitable for arable farming.

Consequences of deforestation

Soil

With an increased demand for resources and food, constant pressure was put upon the land and soil to provide food for a growing economy. Regular clearing and plowing exhausted existing soil, which eventually became infertile. Runoff and eroded soil from deforested hillsides increased the amount of silt and impeded the flow of water into agricultural areas.[13]

Eventually, due to the Mediterranean climate and the increased depletion of soil nutrients from hundreds of years of harvesting, yields diminished.[13] Rainwater that had been locked into the soil through vegetation and forests was now running off too quickly, with each raindrop unprotected by plants or by a litter layer.[14]

Flooding/harbors and ports

Erosion accelerated up to twentyfold in the 3rd century, creating unusable marshlands, which spread diseases such as malaria. Flooding from runoff disrupted water supply to natural springs and rivers, but also increased siltation to coastal areas and harbours at river deltas. Rains washed away the unprotected earth and greatly altered coastlines, in some cases, pushing them many miles farther out to sea as in the case around the mouths of the Po River.[15]

The washing away of topsoil and deposits of silt and gravel meant that harbors and ports needed to be moved, causing further burden upon the economy. Even in the city of Rome, floods covered the lower parts of the city and backed up the sewers. The first such flood was noted in 241 BC; records indicate increased flooding of the river from that time onward.[16]

Reflections and awareness

Clearing for agricultural needs and for heat was a necessity for long-term survival in Roman times, though there is a debate as to whether the Romans understood the implications of deforestation. Richard Grove said, "states will act to prevent environmental degradation only when their economic interests are shown to be directly threatened." The Romans did have some forms of ecological conservation though. Recycling of glassware was practiced along with architectural design that utilized solar heating. Forests were also under government regulations and protected for future resources.[17]

In the 5th century BC Plato complained that "the loss of timber had denuded the hills and plains surrounding Athens and caused massive soil erosion."[18] Cicero also noted "we (humans) are the masters of what the earth produces," and "all things in this world which men employ have been created and provided for the sake of men."[19]

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Surface runoff

Surface runoff

Surface runoff is the unconfined flow of water over the ground surface, in contrast to channel runoff. It occurs when excess rainwater, stormwater, meltwater, or other sources, can no longer sufficiently rapidly infiltrate in the soil. This can occur when the soil is saturated by water to its full capacity, and the rain arrives more quickly than the soil can absorb it. Surface runoff often occurs because impervious areas do not allow water to soak into the ground. Furthermore, runoff can occur either through natural or man-made processes. Surface runoff is a major component of the water cycle. It is the primary agent of soil erosion by water. The land area producing runoff that drains to a common point is called a drainage basin.

Soil erosion

Soil erosion

Soil erosion is the denudation or wearing away of the upper layer of soil. It is a form of soil degradation. This natural process is caused by the dynamic activity of erosive agents, that is, water, ice (glaciers), snow, air (wind), plants, and animals. In accordance with these agents, erosion is sometimes divided into water erosion, glacial erosion, snow erosion, wind (aeolean) erosion, zoogenic erosion and anthropogenic erosion such as tillage erosion. Soil erosion may be a slow process that continues relatively unnoticed, or it may occur at an alarming rate causing a serious loss of topsoil. The loss of soil from farmland may be reflected in reduced crop production potential, lower surface water quality and damaged drainage networks. Soil erosion could also cause sinkholes.

Silt

Silt

Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil or as sediment mixed in suspension with water. Silt usually has a floury feel when dry, and lacks plasticity when wet. Silt also can be felt by the tongue as granular when placed on the front teeth.

Mediterranean climate

Mediterranean climate

A Mediterranean climate, also called a dry summer climate, described by Köppen as Cs, is a climate type that occurs in the lower mid-latitudes, characterized by warm to hot, dry summers and mild, fairly wet winters; these weather conditions are typically experienced in the majority of Mediterranean-climate regions and countries, but remain highly dependent on proximity to the ocean, altitude and geographical location.

Plant nutrition

Plant nutrition

Plant nutrition is the study of the chemical elements and compounds necessary for plant growth and reproduction, plant metabolism and their external supply. In its absence the plant is unable to complete a normal life cycle, or that the element is part of some essential plant constituent or metabolite. This is in accordance with Justus von Liebig’s law of the minimum. The total essential plant nutrients include seventeen different elements: carbon, oxygen and hydrogen which are absorbed from the air, whereas other nutrients including nitrogen are typically obtained from the soil.

Malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin ten to fifteen days after being bitten by an infected mosquito. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the disease months later. In those who have recently survived an infection, reinfection usually causes milder symptoms. This partial resistance disappears over months to years if the person has no continuing exposure to malaria.

River delta

River delta

A river delta is a landform shaped like a triangle, created by deposition of sediment that is carried by a river and enters slower-moving or stagnant water. This occurs where a river enters an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, or another river that cannot carry away the supplied sediment. It is so named because its triangle shape resembles the Greek letter Delta. The size and shape of a delta is controlled by the balance between watershed processes that supply sediment, and receiving basin processes that redistribute, sequester, and export that sediment. The size, geometry, and location of the receiving basin also plays an important role in delta evolution.

Richard Grove

Richard Grove

Richard Hugh Grove was a British historian, environmental activist, and one of the contemporary founders of environmental history as an academic field. His prizewinning book, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600–1860 (1995), was considered a pioneering account of colonial environmental impacts and an origin for early western ideas on environmentalism.

Recycling

Recycling

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its original state. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution and water pollution.

Plato

Plato

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. In Athens, Plato founded the Academy, a philosophical school where he taught the philosophical doctrines that would later became known as Platonism. Plato was a pen name derived from his nickname given to him by his wrestling coach – allegedly a reference to his physical broadness. According to Alexander of Miletus quoted by Diogenes of Sinope his actual name was Aristocles, son of Ariston, of the deme Collytus.

Athens

Athens

Athens is a major coastal urban area in the Mediterranean and is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With its surrounding urban area’s population numbering over three million, it is also the seventh largest urban area in the European Union. Athens dominates and is the capital of the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BCE.

Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics. He is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC.

Interpretations

Conjecture on Roman collapse

Further information: Decline of the Roman Empire

Tainter argued that "deforestation did not cause the Roman collapse,"[20] but that one could make a case as to being a part of it. As Williams wrote, it is more likely that constant war, ravaging epidemics, rebellion, invasion from outside, a declining population, and an excessive degree of urbanization, separately or in combination, operated on the land in an empire that had extended beyond its means.[21]

In the 2011 environmental book Life Without Oil by Steve Hallett, the author argues that the collapse of the Roman Empire may have been linked to a peak wood scenario in the Mediterranean Basin. He suggests that, as wood had to be hauled from ever further away, the law of diminishing returns undermined the economic performance of Roman industry, leaving Rome vulnerable to the other, well documented problems of invasion and internal division. They discuss this as cautionary tale comparing it to contemporary society's potential fate under a post-peak oil scenario.[22]

Alternative view

Some argue that almost all of the above is based on an unhistorical projection of present concerns onto the past.[23] This alternative view argues that there are immense complexities of time, space, climate, geology and topography which, when combined with our extremely fragmentary information, makes generalizations almost impossible. Some crops – dates, figs, olives, chestnuts – played a very important role in Roman agriculture. Grains were often intercultivated with these crops. Almost all species of trees grow again when cut down. Cutting down a wood does not, by itself, destroy woodland. Coppicing is one way in which wood could be harvested on a sustainable basis for example.

Hypocausts were pre-adapted to burn poor quality fuels like straw as well as coal. There is a good reason to believe that both straw and coal were important fuels in antiquity, especially in Roman Britain where coal was abundant in many areas. A great deal of protection against soil erosion arises from terracing hillsides. We do not know how extensive terraces were in antiquity but a good deal of the soil erosion here assumed to be caused by the Romans, may well date to the Dark Ages when the maintenance of terraces broke down. Changes in tree cover may well arise from differences in climate, which are still not well understood. But there is some evidence that the decline of the Roman West is linked to climate change.[24]

Slash-and-burn agriculture, associated with lower populations than the Roman period, can be at least as responsible for deforestation and soil erosion as Roman agriculture. Coastal marshes can be caused by sea level changes quite as much as soil erosion. There may be reasons to believe that tree diseases as early as 6,000 years ago caused the elm decline but that this tree decline was related in some complex way to the practices of Neolithic farmers.[25]

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Mediterranean Basin

Mediterranean Basin

In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin, also known as the Mediterranean Region or sometimes Mediterranea, is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and warm to hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation.

Peak oil

Peak oil

Peak oil is the hypothetical point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which it is argued that production will begin an irreversible decline. It is related to the distinct concept of oil depletion; while global petroleum reserves are finite, the limiting factor is not whether the oil exists but whether it can be extracted economically at a given price. A secular decline in oil extraction could be caused both by depletion of accessible reserves and by reductions in demand that reduce the price relative to the cost of extraction, as might be induced to reduce carbon emissions.

Coppicing

Coppicing

Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repeatedly cut down to near ground level, resulting in a stool. New growth emerges, and after a number of years, the coppiced tree is harvested, and the cycle begins anew. Pollarding is a similar process carried out at a higher level on the tree in order to prevent grazing animals from eating new shoots. Daisugi, is a similar Japanese technique.

Coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is a type of fossil fuel, formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. Many significant coal deposits are younger than this and originate from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

Roman Britain

Roman Britain

Roman Britain was the period in classical antiquity when large parts of the island of Great Britain were under occupation by the Roman Empire. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410. During that time, the territory conquered was raised to the status of a Roman province.

Slash-and-burn

Slash-and-burn

Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegetation, or "slash", is then left to dry, usually right before the rainiest part of the year. Then, the biomass is burned, resulting in a nutrient-rich layer of ash which makes the soil fertile, as well as temporarily eliminating weed and pest species. After about three to five years, the plot's productivity decreases due to depletion of nutrients along with weed and pest invasion, causing the farmers to abandon the field and move to a new area. The time it takes for a swidden to recover depends on the location and can be as little as five years to more than twenty years, after which the plot can be slashed and burned again, repeating the cycle. In Bangladesh and India, the practice is known as jhum or jhoom.

Elm

Elm

Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the flowering plant genus Ulmus in the plant family Ulmaceae. They are distributed over most of the Northern Hemisphere, inhabiting the temperate and tropical-montane regions of North America and Eurasia, presently ranging southward in the Middle East to Lebanon and Israel, and across the Equator in the Far East into Indonesia.

Source: "Deforestation during the Roman period", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 8th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period.

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Further Reading

Deforestation

Forest

Forestry

Shifting cultivation

Clearcutting

Thyolo

Environmental issues in Indonesia

Deforestation in Thailand

Deforestation in Haiti

Deforestation in Nigeria

Deforestation in Costa Rica

Deforestation by continent

Deforestation in Madagascar

Deforestation in Central America

Deforestation in Kenya

Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Deforestation in British Columbia

Deforestation in Myanmar
See also
References
  1. ^ Boyle, J. F., Gaillard, M.-J., Kaplan, J. O. and Dearing, J. A. (2011). "historic land use and carbon budgets: A critical review". The Holocene. 21: 715–722. doi:10.1177/0959683610386984. S2CID 129590170.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ^ Williams 2006, p. 62.
  3. ^ a b Hughes 1994, p. 157.
  4. ^ Durand, John D. (1977). "Historical Estimates of World Population: An Evaluation". Population and Development Review. 3 (3): 253–296. doi:10.2307/1971891. ISSN 0098-7921. JSTOR 1971891.
  5. ^ Williams 2006, p. 63.
  6. ^ Williams 2006, p. 68.
  7. ^ Hughes 1994, p. 77.
  8. ^ Hughes 1994, p. 190.
  9. ^ BBC, 2004.
  10. ^ a b c Chew 2001, p. 92.
  11. ^ Williams 2006, p. 71.
  12. ^ Hughes 1994, p. 86.
  13. ^ a b Hughes 2001, p. 138.
  14. ^ Delano Smith, Catherine. (1996). The "wilderness" in Roman Times. In Shipley, Graham & Salmon, John. Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquities. New York: Routledge, 159.
  15. ^ Hughes 2001, p. 84.
  16. ^ Hughes 2001, p. 83.
  17. ^ Chew 2001, p. 97.
  18. ^ Williams 2006, p. 74.
  19. ^ Chew 2001, p. 96.
  20. ^ Tainter, Joseph (2006). "Archeology of Overshoot and Collapse". Annual Review of Anthropology. 35: 59–74. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123136.
  21. ^ Williams 2006, p. 80.
  22. ^ Hallett, Steve (2011). Life Without Oil: Why We Must Shift to a New Energy Future. Prometheus Books. ISBN 9781616144012. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  23. ^ Rackham & Grove 2003, p. 174.
  24. ^ Cheyette, F. L. (2008). "The disappearance of the ancient landscape and the climatic anomaly of the early Middle Ages: a question to be pursued". Early Medieval Europe. 16 (2): 127–165. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0254.2008.00225.x. S2CID 163001152.
  25. ^ Rasmussen, Peter; Christensen, Kjeld (1999). "The mid-Holocene Ulmus decline: a new way to evaluate the pathogen hypothesis". Archived from the original on 2011-09-28. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
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