Constructing a technological forest: Nature, culture, and Tree-planting in the nebraska sand hills

U.S. foresters built the first federal tree nursery in the treeless Nebraska Sand Hills, in 1902, and began planting a forest in the surrounding grasslands. This forest was built to be a technology that would produce timber, ameliorate the climate, and attract settlers to the area. Over the course of a century foresters gained a unique ecological perspective by creating rather than harvesting a forest. As a technology and an ecosystem, designed by humans but shaped by ecological process, this forest defies the boundaries of natural and artificial.