Hundreds of years of intensive management of the forests of Europe gradually have replaced native ecosystems with single-age, single-species plantations, often of nonnative trees. These forests are designed to yield wood and pulp at a high rate indefinitely. However, without multiple species interacting with each other and drawing and returning varying combinations of nutrients from the soil, these forests have lost their resilience. They seem to be especially vulnerable to a new form of insult: industrial air pollution.
