An environmental visionary.
George Perkins Marsh, American (Woodstock, 1801 – Vallombrosa, Florence 1882) was a geographer, a diplomat, but above all the first visionary proponent of environmentalism. First engaged as a diplomat with the Ottoman Empire, where he was able to study the historical and political affairs of Egypt and the Holy Land, he later became the first U.S. ambassador to the newly established Kingdom of Italy.
He was a personality of extraordinary intellectual commitment to the environment and ecology, a subject that was completely ignored at the time.
In the book “Man and Nature: That is, the Earth’s Surface Changed by Man.“, Marsh introduces the topic of possible climate changes that would occur, as a result of forest depletion.
This vision led him to propose urbanization in line with nature. Many pages of his book are an extraordinarily topical text, his theories highlighting the centrality of man in his relationship with nature, emphasizing the negative aspects, but also the possibility of progress capable of intervening in the rebalancing of the natural order.
Marsh is an example of a “global citizen”, who skillfully manages to combine the role of a diplomat and an absolute interest in his host territory.
An exceptional field of observation
In Italy, it devotes the greatest attention to the area between Florence and Vallombrosa, was certainly not as a random choice. What made me curious were his ideas that led him to argue that the Tuscan territory was a place “strongly permeated by the hand of man” and therefore needed to be well followed in policies for its preservation, including landscape protection.
Why does an American scholar, a forerunner in ecology and the environment, active in the construction of Yellowstone Park and the conception of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, a diplomat traveling the world, stop in the secluded territory of Vallombrosa?
One of the causes was the proximity to Vallombrosa Abbey of the Camaldolese Shrine of St. Romuald, of the Benedictine order. Since ancient times the monks have obeyed the rule that includes the recommendation to safeguard trees. It is practically the first Forest Code, which includes the mystique of nature and respect for the most powerful plant beings, revered for millennia by all civilizations: trees.
The tree is a slow and enduring force that tends to overcome the sky, a green oracle, a sacred act of faith that nature manifests to unite the roots of the soil with the sky.
My forest serendipity
Once again serendipity, fortunate circumstances, accompany me. I am a walker, I love the hills and mountains, and my summers, for some years now, have seen my beloved Tuscan woods as a backdrop. In nature I regenerate and, above all, through it I have made wonderful discoveries about knowing myself.
The step was casually short, as a journalist, and as a historian, combining things at first glance distinct and distant from each other: I encountered the name of George Marsh, celebrated in the United States as the founding father of ecology and climate studies and almost unknown to us.
History makes use of absolute dating, that is, the process of determining the chronological age of an artifact. Used mainly in sciences such as archaeology and geology making use of dendrochronology, which Leonardo Da Vinci was already familiar with, having written about it in the “Treatise on Painting“.
Environment and dendrology
It took a full four centuries to recognize this science as an accurate dating tool serving multiple fields of study. Dendrochronology is the science that deals with the study of plants that have secondary growth, that is, that produce wood: in more modern times it has become forest botany.
Annual tree growth rings provide valuable environmental and climatic information.
Dendrology is a valuable tool for analyzing past and present climate to study atmospheric changes, which are not always linear in tree growth because the width and density of the rings varies with exposure, elevation, soil structure, rainfall, solar radiation, atmospheric composition, and many other factors of successive epochs, and which have been timely and accurately recorded in tree rings.
You would never have thought that a tree could “hide” so much knowledge within itself, would you?
We must learn to understand that reality is more complex than it appears.
Climate engineering
It is very important not only to plant, but to know and manage well, what to plant. George Marsh had already introduced this concept, which has since developed through progress and climate engineering.
Electromagnetic fields are present everywhere in our environments, but they are invisible to the human eye. Electric fields are produced by the local accumulation of electric charges in the atmosphere during thunderstorms. The earth’s magnetic field causes the needle of a compass to orient along the north-south direction and is used by birds and fish for navigation in the air and water.
By learning about trees, we discover that they have the ability to electromagnetically affect human vital functions, providing us with the tools to create bioenergetic therapeutic green spaces that are particularly beneficial to people.
Every tree emits electromagnetic frequencies identical to those that characterize and power the functioning of our organs and biological functions. The quality of the energy emitted depends on the species and genus of the plant planted. Some species can be described as very positive for the health of all of us, influencing the whole organism in a very favorable way; others are also to be considered disturbing or harmful depending on where they are planted.
The intensity of electromagnetic fields emitted by trees is extremely low but possesses a very high biological affinity for humans. Thanks to studies of the biosphere, generating fields have been defined that are capable of collecting and conveying along a certain direction, the energy properties of trees, that is, conveying their biological information.
Let us remember that trees are the lungs of the earth and have the power to absorb CO2, that is, carbon. Therefore, poor design and planting, can turn into carbon growth and biodiversity loss, rather than increase. Forest management for climate change mitigation requires action by different stakeholders undertaking different activities.
To date, several forest carbon monitoring systems have been developed for different regions, using data that are under consideration in the best scientific studies.
Moving from theory to practice is a very complex transformation if you only look at the risks and uncertainties, scientific theory has never forced lawmakers to invest in resources. Confrontation takes place every day over unknowns, and climate change is a risk we have not yet faced, practically an unknown land.
So it is not the demonization of production, progress and civilization that should guide us, but the right knowledge to act correctly, applying the latest science for the technology of CO2 reabsorption from the atmosphere.
Forest school
George Perkins Marsh left us a great lesson: man lives in resonance with nature, nature is our environment, but we must learn to know carefully the forces that make it up, and we can no longer afford mistakes.
We need “visionaries” like Marsh, minds that can apply greater awareness and spread environmental education. Design innovative solutions that can make our present and past actions harmless. Climate change needs opportunities to combine entrepreneurship with science, creating investments for entirely new solutions.
The link between Florence’s forestry degree programs and the existing Vallombrosa State Biogenetic Nature Reserve is growing stronger.
The Vallombrosa forest, so beloved by George Marsh, is now managed by the Biodiversity Regiment, Vallombrosa Biodiversity Unit of the Carabinieri Corps.. Every year forestry students carry out teaching exercises in the forest for the various subjects, an indispensable moment for the proper training of the forestry graduate.
Let us remember that nature can wage the most tremendous war on us: without weapons, asymmetrically and with the powerful force of perseverance.
