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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

> Are you sure that isn't native woodland?

Hard to tell 100% without being present on site but that's my guess, yeah. I've very rarely seen "natural" forests being completely wiped out like this as a result of strong winds, the worst that can happen is some older trees being knocked down here and there, but, as I said, I've not yet seen "natural" forests being completely knocked down as a result of one wind-storm.

I also suspect those were planted forests because you cannot use that wood as raw material for Venice's Arsenal for centuries past without planting something in return. I suspect the planting continued even after the Arsenal itself and wood-shipping in general were no longer a thing.

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What would you class as "natural" forests?

I doubt theres a forest in Europe that hasn't been touched by man.

Venice would have been very selective about the wood it would have cut for ships etc, you can't just cut any old wood. It needs to be knot free, be straight, or have just the right curvature. They weren't clear felling vast swathes, then replanting. I'm not even sure the was conscious planting at all.

The UN has a definition for "Intact Forest Landscapes". Little of those are left in Europe, the majority in Russia and Scandinavia. Western/Central Europe has only tiny slivers of any.

I'm confused by your point.

"Intact Forest Landscapes" seems to exclude any human made forest. So are you against all human planting of forests?

I was providing data for your

> I doubt theres a forest in Europe that hasn't been touched by man.

Sorry, I thought you were providing your definition of natural forest

There is some but its extremely rare. In Germany you for example have the Hambacher Forst, where parts are as old as 700 years. Its scale is however lacking

https://www.dw.com/image/45302299_401.png

Generally you have "untouched" as in oldgrowth/primary forest and not being a secondary forest, which takes a few hundred years.

Artificial forests are bound to be less resilient than wild ones.

The lack of biodiversity is a major concern, since we often take shortcuts by planting cuttings, which are genetic clones, or by using an initial pool that isn't sufficiently diverse.

An artificial forest is better than no forest, off course, but wild, ancient forests are more precious, since they are living DNA libraries.

Another common term is old-growth/primary forest

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