• Locke, Katharine A.
  School of Forest Resources, University of Maine
  

Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.) is an important and valuable timber species in the northeastern United States. The species was heavily exploited in the early history of Maine. Both logging and clearing of land for agriculture greatly reduced the amount of eastern white pine in the forest. By the early 1800s the promise of better jobs in urban centers and better land to the west caused a significant decline in agriculture throughout New England. Eastern white pine is one of the few species that can compete with the grasses in old fields and so it is highly successful in filling in abandoned fields, often as a monoculture. Today the Maine landscape is covered with numerous stands comprising only eastern white pine, the result of field abandonment.