[DoreenMichele]

Seeing like a state is a terrific book.

It's possible that I learned the idea of forest death from it rather than a college class.[1] The German word for it is waldsterben and there seem to be few English language resources about it.[3]

My recollection is that monoculture forests promote forest death. Diversity is critical to a thriving forest.

[1] Or both. I was an Environmental Resource Management major.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30749891

[gerdesj]

"My recollection is that monoculture forests promote forest death."

Quite, and I'll venture that any form of monoculture is generally in an unhealthy state or will eventually cease to function. At best it will be sub-optimal. Diversity must be encouraged.

Whether you look at woods/forests, dogs, people, entire ecosystems, gut bacteria or whatever, you generally see rude health associated with diversity.

English is of course a (somewhat) Germanic language but as far as I know we don't even have a concept of forest-death or anything like it. We'd probably go for something like "dying-forest syndrome" instead. Actually, we'd probably call it something really stupid and contentious like: "German forest disease" or similar nonsense and then rapidly give it a Greek and Latin combo name when the sheer racism of the original name is called out.

Anyway, I recall wandering the forest near to this (1983ish): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermannsdenkmal My Dad was a British Army Officer and he very carefully got us lost via a complex "contouring" maneuver. We escaped eventually but it is said that to get properly lost involves a British Occifer and a map. Give them a compass and you are totally doomed!

Errr, anyway, we are wandering through the woods at Herman's Denk. Lots of trees and a lot of species seen. The woods looked and felt healthy. Any decent sized wood is a pleasant place for good reason - that's where we (humans) should be. We are a species of tree huggers 8)

My company owns a bit of land and we have three huge oaks (40' plus height, at least eight foot girth) on it. I will eventually kick my local council into bestowing "tree preservation orders" (TPO) on them because allowing harm to them will we environmental vandalism.

[thedailymail]

The concept does come from Germany but there is now an English term for it: "forest dieback" (although "waldsterben" can be used as a loanword as well.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_dieback

[gerdesj]

I note: "The Radiohead song, not the tabloid." from your profile.

I went to Abingdon School in Oxfordshire 1985-89. We had a school band called "On a Friday". I remember sitting cross legged outside the cricket pavillion, near School House at the end of a Summer Term (1988?), being entertained by OaF. Thom was the singer and Ed and co doing their thing. They were quite good.

[cafard]

The USMC has or had a saying that the most dangerous thing in the world is a second lieutenant with a compass. My brother, now retired from the Marines, points out that there never were a lot of field-grade officers out in the bush reading compasses.

[Ice_cream_suit]

That you both for that suggestion.

"Seeing Like a State" seems like a fascinating book.

[DoreenMichele]

It was one of the books I picked up after seeing San Francisco for the first time and feeling incredibly inspired. I stopped in a bookstore on the way home and spent about $300 on kind of a home-cooked urban planning self-study course.

I had traditional urban planning type stuff but also more sociopolitical type stuff.

I also bought a book about The Clemente Course.

Seeing like a state is probably the book that made the biggest impression on me.