Talk:Old-growth forest

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Old-growth forest article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1

A fact from Old-growth forest appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 31 August 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that there are large stands of primeval forest on the border between Poland and Belarus?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2004/August.

Wikipedia

Ecology Mid‑importance

	Ecology portal This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Ecology, an effort to create, expand, organize, and improve ecology-related articles.EcologyWikipedia:WikiProject EcologyTemplate:WikiProject EcologyEcology articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Plants High‑importance

	Plants portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Plants, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of plants and botany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PlantsWikipedia:WikiProject PlantsTemplate:WikiProject Plantsplant articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Environment High‑importance

	Environment portal This environment-related article is part of the WikiProject Environment to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized. Read Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ and leave any messages at the project talk page.EnvironmentWikipedia:WikiProject EnvironmentTemplate:WikiProject EnvironmentEnvironment articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Climate change Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Climate change, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Climate change on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Climate changeWikipedia:WikiProject Climate changeTemplate:WikiProject Climate changeClimate change articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
If you are looking for ways to improve this article, we recommend checking out our recommended sources and our style guide

Forestry (inactive)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Forestry, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.ForestryWikipedia:WikiProject ForestryTemplate:WikiProject ForestryForestry articles

The content of this article has been derived in whole or part from http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/ca8753en. Permission has been received from the copyright holder to release this material. Evidence of this has been confirmed and stored by VRT volunteers, under ticket number 2020073010003087. See File:Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 – Key findings.pdf
This template is used by approved volunteers dealing with the Wikimedia volunteer response team system (VRTS) after receipt of a clear statement of permission at permissions-enwikimedia.org. Do not use this template to claim permission.

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 January 2020 and 22 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bambuseae-8368.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:50, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rlfay.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article looks bad

It looks like every new editor of the article tries to stick in his ideas. Many time new editor repeats the ideas that were already written above him/her. This article needs some protection from vandalism by green-worshippers :) Gentlemen, before you put the same "green" idea into the article, please make sure that you idea is not written in the article already. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Creativityisme (talk • contribs) 09:01, 3 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reconsider?

In view of the changes and additions since February of 2013, does this article still deserve the flag that it is too North-America-centric? rowley (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Old-growth forest. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110409111517/http://www.foe.org.au/resources/chain-reaction/editions/105/tasmanias-old-growth-forests/ to http://www.foe.org.au/resources/chain-reaction/editions/105/tasmanias-old-growth-forests

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 04:35, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ancient woodland

It is suggested in the lede that the term in use in Great Britain for old-growth forest is 'ancient woodland'. Now whilst both terms (and others mentioned) are in frequent use in different parts of the world, I'm not sure that they are strictly the same. Ancient woodland in Britain can have seen a lot of human intervention - indeed usually has seen it - over the centuries. Perhaps someone with a deeper knowledge of the subject could assist? cheers Geopersona (talk) 04:57, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, To the best of my knowledge both old-growth and Ancient woodland will have seen some human activity. There may have been less activity per-hectare on larger and less densely populated contenents but that is speculative.

As the main article states "According to the World Resources Institute, as of January 2009, only 21% of the original old-growth forests that once existed on earth are remaining.[37] An estimated one-half of Western Europe's forests were cleared before the Middle Ages,[38] and 90% of the old-growth forests that existed in the contiguous United States in the 1600s have been cleared.[39]"

Why have a page on 'really-old-woodland/forest' and not include the UK where there exists extensive research and work on the topic? Maybe there exists terminoligy worldwide for 'really-old woodland/forest' we can include? There are references to mainland Europe, Asia, Australia, the USA and Canada so the UK should be noted too. If anything, having the reference to another similar terminoligy will increase the readers potential knowledge.

A discussion on the differences and amount of activity through history, and it's effect on biodiversity is perhaps a good issue for a scholarly journal, but the addition of similar terminoligy is, for now, useful.

All that said, the mention of and link to Ancient Woodland in the section 'Locations of remaining tracts' is perhaps sufficient.

Baldavier (talk) 16:07, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I concur that the meaning of "old growth" in the US and "ancient woodland" in the UK are very similar, including the possibility of heavy human disturbance. But there are some technical differences that could be better flushed out. Crescent77 (talk) 04:21, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with bias / general issues

Hello! There are a few issues I noticed in the article.

There are a few spots in the article, as wikipedia notes in the warning banner, where the worldwide view may not be exhibited. To me, this sentence from the lead section sounds like it is portraying logging in a negative light (loggers destroy while others protect): "Old-growth forests are economically valuable, and logging of these forests has been a point of contention between the logging industry (which cuts down forests that have been growing for hundreds of years) and environmentalists (who seek to protect and preserve the forests)."

The section entitled climatic impacts also has an issue portraying both sides. The overall tone of this section is that old-growth forests are actually neutral as far as carbon sequestration, or that disturbance is not a factor in determining the effect of a forests ability to sequester carbon. The sources cited are not all scholarly here, including Wired magazine. There is scientific research to contradict these claims and that should be noted. There is also some vague language in this section: "Critics note that at old-growth forests are often perceived to be in equilibrium, but could be releasing as much carbon dioxide as they capture, or are currently in a state of decay." Who are the critics? What are the criticizing exactly?

Lastly, the section on forest dynamics definitions may be overly long in reference to its relative importance to the overall topic.

I will be working to fix some of these things! Input is appreciated.

Rlfay (talk) 19:58, 12 April 2017 (UTC) Rachel[reply]

Changes made

Hello, I changed a couple of things about the article:

1. Changed last sentence of leading paragraph to sound less negative toward logging industries 2. Added references to scientific journals in the paragraph about climate change to make it seem less one-sided, demonstrated that old-growth forests may have more potential to sequester carbon that originally portrayed in paragraph. 3. Added additional paragraph to show that old-growth forests both influence climate change and are influenced by climate change.

Please review these changes, feel free to add to/deny any of them. I appreciate feedback.

Thanks! Rlfay (talk) 21:09, 12 April 2017 (UTC) Rachel[reply]

I like the changes you made, Rachel. I tweaked the sentence in the lead a little further, primarily to reflect that opinions can differ within the logging industry on cutting down old-growth. Tdslk (talk) 22:05, 12 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indigenous stewardship

I think the definition of the old-growth forest should be expanded to include the ecosystems that are enhanced by the native peoples that live there. Many indigenous people that are not connected to the modern world consider themselves (and functionally are) members of the ecosystem themselves. Many of the old-growth forests we have today have only survived so long because of centuries and centuries of maintenance by the people who live in them. It is important to remember that humans come from the Earth just like any other animal does, and that we also have a role in the ecosystem just like any other organism. Houghoug (talk) 16:50, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia, in itself, doesn't expand definitions. It summarizes the definitions provided by reliable sources. If you have reliable sources that cover the definition you think should be included, feel free to add the definition along with the sources. Crescent77 (talk) 00:56, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Native forest" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Native forest has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 October 17 § Native forest until a consensus is reached. Hildeoc (talk) 10:34, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New website on European old-growth forests

We have created a new website on European virgin / old-growth forests. To our knowledge it is the only website giving general information on European old-growth forests. Please check the site, and if you like it add it to the External links section. Krasanen (talk) 13:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]