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A comment on Norway: photographs taken of the same places separated by long periods of time. Parent comment

Re:Norway: photographs taken of the same places separated by... by jofer on Wednesday November 04, 2015 @12:20PM (#10508029)
Changes in landscape and colonization by various plants as glaciers retreat is a very, very well-documented process. The vegetation changes in the picture shown are unambiguously due to the retreat of the glacier.

Global changes aside, it takes awhile to form soils that will support plant life. Near the foot of a retreating glacier, you'll always have till and moraines. If they've been recently exposed, they'll always be bare. It takes a few decades for forests, etc to get established.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Norway: photographs taken of the same places separated by... by baldfat on Wednesday November 04, 2015 @12:49PM (#10508243)
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/scandinavia/xnorway.html

Deforestation was happening in the 1600s and 1700s and required the stopping of many saw mills.

I just say this because humanity really did horrible environmental things throughout our history. For example the ceders of Lebanon being completly cut down by 800 BC and the deforestation of Israel during the crusades which never came back.

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Re:Norway: photographs taken of the same places separated by... by jofer on Wednesday November 04, 2015 @01:14PM (#10508410)
That's all very true, but for that particular picture, the lack of vegetation is because the area was covered by ice only a few years before. Note the lack of soil in the older photo. There's only rocks and silt.
[ Parent | on HN ]