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The US has been re-foresting for a long time, nearly a century I think. This is likely to accelerate now that the rest of the world is not so depend on US for food (Russia and some ex-USSR areas are turning into significant exporters of food).



Where are you getting your facts from JRV? Your pretty on the ball with things but I can't find any information to back your claims up. Do you have any links?


That's from memory.

The ex-USSR farm production increase I saw in a Wall Street Journal within the last six months. The main thrust of the article was how a lot of US farmers were abandoning wheat due not only declining imports to the ex-USSR but in fact competition in international sales.

The US re-forestation is trickier. I saw this in an paper in Science or Nature several years ago. I see no basic statistics on the US Forest Service web site now. The claim seemed credible due to the source (those two journals aren't the most rigorous in print, but they are peer reviewed, and I consider then generally very reliable compared to any non-science source).

The claim also seems reasonable since the railroads had more or less stripped forests during the era of the steam engine, and recovery combined with the gradual long-term decline in acreage in farming suggests increases in forestation could overcome suburban development.

There is some info at http://www.fs.fed.us/research/sustain/documents/SustainableForests.pdf around page 20 that is at least consistent with this.
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