California: The photographic work of Grant Anderson
San Francisco photographer Grant Johnson at the links below. An artist
who works with a camera, Johnson has traveled widely across the region
and captured a forest landscape in crisis – one increasingly besieged
by insect infestations, climate change and high severity wildfire.
(Photo of Silicon Valley, CA by Grant Anderson)
Johnson’s photos dovetail nicely with recent scientific studies that
document the problem in excruciating detail. Like many, he is worried
about the future of this landscape. Will today’s fire and
beetle-damaged woodlands bounce back as conifer forests or give way –
in an era of climate change – to more deciduous-dominated stands or
even morph into vast scrublands of brush and grass? No-one knows. But
Johnson is out there in the field, watching and taking pictures.
After my recent article about the destructive Moonlight fire in Plumas
County, he sent me the following e-mail message: “I travel the West
documenting the environment and I can say, from personal observation,
that virtually all of the western forests are under siege by parasitic
organisms which are devastating much of the common native flora.
Then, of course, they burn. This is not your fathers America anymore.
It’s a brave new world of very uncertain destiny but one thing is for
sure…it will be a lot easier to see what forest is left for the lack
of trees obscuring the view.” I was struck by Johnson’s photos and my
guess is that you will be, too. To see his work in detail, and learn
more about Johnson himself, visit the following web-site:
http://www.grantjohnson.net/ For a direct link to his “Forests of
the Future” photos:
http://www.grantjohnson.net/gallery.php?gallery_id=16
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com