Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to Reading the Forested Landscape

Thousands of readers have had their experience of being in a forest changed forever by reading Tom Wessels’s Reading the Forested Landscape.

Was this forest once farmland? Was it logged in the past? Was there ever a major catastrophe like a fire or a wind storm that brought trees down? Now Wessels takes that wonderful ability to discern much of the history of the forest from visual clues and boils it all down to a manageable field guide that you can take out to the woods and use to start playing forest detective yourself.

Wessels has created a key-a fascinating series of either/or questions-to guide you through the process of analyzing what you see. You’ll feel like a woodland Sherlock Holmes. No walk in the woods will ever be the same.