Nature’s Nonpareil Gift—Forests

This chapter highlights the fact that natural forests are a unique gift of natural processes that take thousands of years to reach mature or climatic state. Geological and archaeological evidences suggest that species composition, connectivity, migration, extinction, and genetic improvement over several millennia impacted by the climatic regimes of the past have led to the creation as well as extinction of many biological species. Besides biological components, the physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil are also interwoven in a natural forest that can change the species diversity and dramatically alter successional properties leading either to its extinction or progression over time. In essence, natural forest is an irreplaceable assemblage resulting from an orderly process of modification of the physical environment by the plant community and culminating in a stabilized ecosystem. Natural forests once lost cannot be restored to the original state. Not only that, deforestation and conversion to grasslands or other land uses may cause high losses of carbon bound in flora and fauna and of carbon from soil carbon reserves. On a global scale approximately 30% of the original carbon stored in soil may eventually be lost if forest clearing and land use change continue unabated.