What can't forests do?

Forests and their surrounding areas are under considerable human influence. This intentionally and unintentionally changes the composition of their forest communities and jeopardizes their interaction, forest services and the self-regulation of the forest. Forest managers counteract this with plant protection measures, e.g. reforestation, fences against browsing by red deer or tree removal and insecticides against bark beetles. Persistent interventions or significant disturbances permanently change the distribution areas and composition of species in the affected ecosystems. Species migrate or die out, new species migrate or emerge. Ecosystems are very unstable in these phases. By the time a new equilibrium has been established in the living world, the inanimate world has also changed. Soil, water and atmosphere change like their inhabitants. The processes have been researched and understood to some extent. It is known that these profound upheavals occur repeatedly as a result of significant disturbances in world history. These include the phases of major species extinctions and climate change. The adaptation of forest ecosystems took thousands of years.

For around 300 years, humans have been introducing ever larger quantities of additional substances into the life cycles of forests and nature. These include artificial material creations such as plastic or exhaust gases from the combustion of fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil and coal. Many of these additional material inputs can only be broken down or newly formed in nature's life cycles over centuries to millions of years, which is why fossil substances, for example, are referred to as non-renewable. In the shorter-term, natural material cycles, conventional material inputs are already being processed. For example, substances released from decomposition and respiration are bound in plant growth and fruit. Excess quantities can only be bound to a limited extent. As a result, additional substance inputs and their decomposition products initially accumulate and trigger multiple chain reactions in living and non-living nature. These include the current climate change and the great extinction of species. These upheavals are man-made.

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