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I am sure it was mentioned upthread (hell, I might have mentioned it) but New England was cruddy land to farm in with stony soils - in large part due to the ice ages repeatedly scraping off the region's topsoil and depositing it in Long Island. As a result, as soon as the western frontier opened up in the early 19th century those who wanted to farm moved west, and most of the land (outside of fertile regions like the Connecticut River valley) was essentially returned to nature as second-growth forest. This is painfully clear to anyone who spends time hiking in the woods in New England, as you will invariably eventually find remnants of either an old stone wall or an abandoned house foundation.
I am sure it was mentioned upthread (hell, I might have mentioned it) but New England was cruddy land to farm in with stony soils -
Seasonal freezing 'heaves' stones in the soil up toward the surface. So every year we have a fresh crop of rocks.
Lack of seasonal droughts [which are so common in most of the continant] means that we have lush vegetation year -round.
Lack of cyclic droughts mean that perennials do not die off every 4 to 8 years. They thrive.
I have trails on my land that need to b e bush-hogged every 3 to 4 years to keep the forest from swallowing them.
In New England, any pasture or clearing will see trees encroaching every year from the treeline. It takes a lot of work to clear a field. Then every year it takes more work to maintain that field cleared.
the traffic between Hartford and anywhere going southwest on 84 has simply reached NIGHTMARE LEVELS.
i travel through Connecticut after 9pm only.... and unfortunately, often.
a typical thursday or friday, an hour or so after noon in the warm months driving up from the Tappan Zee, i can cruise 287 coming up from i-81 and 78, or from i-80 and the Delaware River Gap... the minute you hit 684, it can be 4-6 hours getting up to, past, and through the peak traffic of Hartford.
It's TOTALLY INSANE.
get up to Mass, NH, Maine, etc, it's much better... even when you factor in the Boston and RT128 traffic.
I was comparing MA with upstate NY not NJ; the forest cover difference is obvious
Massachussets has 60% forest cover (3 million acres : UMass Amherst) to New York's 63% (19 million acres : NYS DEC)
When you travel due west from the Berkshires, you are traveling from the most densely forested part of Massachussets into the Hudson/Mohawk confluence and then onto the Finger Lakes region which are indeed the least forested and most farmed part of NYS. So the contrast would seem great.
Massachussets has 60% forest cover (3 million acres : UMass Amherst) to New York's 63% (19 million acres : NYS DEC)
hmm... I live in the western part of the state which is less developed. Definitely more forested and less farmland mixed in the hills than much of upstate NY (thinking of Finger Lakes & southern Tier). Endless forest, taken by in the hills west of the Connecticut River valley. Also, sometimes forestland refers to only "useful for timber". A lot of central and eastern MA is tree covered but the land is large lot residential with some conservation land mixed in that would uneconomical for timber production.
The Adirondacks are larger than Vermont and New Hampshire. Whats your point?
Cherry picking a region within Upstate NY that has marginally less forestry than all of Massachusetts?
Southern New England is literally no different than New Jersey.
Northern New England is pretty different to Southern, which is more similar to the Adirondacks.
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