Air pollution acid rain and the future of forests

Abstract

three hundred million years ago, when much of Europe and North America basked in a moist tropical climate, forests of fast-growing trees spread across vast areas of swampy lowlands. Giant "scare-trees" bearing little resemblance to the trees of today stood with stately coordinates, the forerunners of modern-day conifers. After these trees died, the brackish water in which they grew protected them from decay. Time and the increased pressure of sediment helped transform the trees and surrounding vegetation into solid masses of carbon, which now comprise the extensive coal fields of the British Isles, the U.S. Appalachians, the Ruhr Basin of West Germany and Belgium, the Saar-Lorraine Basin of West Germany and France, and the Donets Basin of the Soviet Union.