Borealis: Life in the Woods (2021-2022) by Jeroen Toirkens and Jelle Brandt Corstius

Photograph of Borealis: Life in the Woods exhibit, taken by Jeroen Toirkens. The exhibit showcases photographs of boreal forests centered on the theme of deforestation (from Jeroen Toirkens Photography, Fotomuseum Den Haag / Museum of Photography The Hague, 2021).

  • Borealis: Life in the Woods is an exhibit by photographer Jeroen Toirkens and journalist Brandt Corstius that was displayed in the Anchorage Museum (Alaska, USA) in 2021-2022, and is now accessible online. The exhibit is a collection of photographs, organized into eight categories. Each category corresponds to an issue about the state, culture, and history of boreal forests that reside in the northern areas of the globe, connecting to the title of the exhibit, Borealis, meaning “northern” in Greek. This type of forest, also known as the Taiga or the Great Northern Forest, stretches from Alaska to Russia, including parts of Canada, Scotland, Scandinavia and Japan. 
  • The Borealis exhibit is accompanied by a 9-minute video following Toirkens and Costius’s process of creating the exhibit about boreal forests with the goal of increasing appreciation for this often overlooked, largest terrestrial biome in the world. The exhibit showcases the effects and history of industrialization, deforestation, and climate change on these forests. The video explains that cutting down a single tree disturbs an entire underlying system, including the roots, fungi, and other organisms, which play a role in exchanging water, nutrients and environmental information. When new trees are planted, it can take up to 400 years for this system to repair itself. 

Toirkens, Jeroen, Netherlands, 1971–. The Cree, 2018. Photograph displaying the large mass of trees cut down for extracting wood (from Jeroen Toirkens Photography, 2020).

  • The exhibit begins by discussing the history of deforestation (image above). Originally, Boreal forests were the hunting grounds for the Cree people (the largest Indigenous group in Canada), but logging companies purchased the rights to collect wood from the area, consequently leading to the loss of 90% of the Canadian boreal forest.

Toirkens, Jeroen, Netherlands, 1971–. The Loggers, 2016. Photograph showing a bog in a forest in Norway (from Jeroen Toirkens Photography, 2020).

  • The Loggers (image above) specifically captures an expansive bog, or a wetland consisting of decomposed plants and trees, in the boreal forest. Although not a direct result of logging activities, it emphasizes the emptiness of the forest after a massive loss of trees, highlighting the damage to the biome that needs almost 400 years to recover.

Toirkens, Jeroen, Netherlands, 1971–. Rewilding Scotland, 2017. Photograph showing a large pine tree in Scotland standing alone on bare ground (from Jeroen Toirkens Photography, 2020).

  • The photo above conveys sadness about the loss of the boreal forest. The work is displayed alongside the words of Alan Watson Featherstone from the organization Trees for Life: “This is a granny pine, an elderly tree. If you come here in twenty years’ time, there will be no trees left at all. At least, unless we take action ourselves. Our forest is dying out and there will be nothing in its place.” The tree standing in solitude evokes a sense of loss and loneliness. By highlighting this tree, photographer Toirkens may have intended to encourage people to take action, or at least to see the urgency of the issue.

How is this related to climate?

  • Boreal forests occupy 17.5% of the Earth’s surface and almost 30% of the world’s forest areas. Besides tropical forests that account for about 45% of global forests, the boreal forest is one of the largest areas of vegetation in the world, covering over 12 million square kilometers (map below).

A map showing in green the global distribution of the Boreal Forest or Taiga biome around the North Pole (from Pravettoni, 2014).

  • Forests are large carbon storage areas on Earth. It is estimated that almost 50% of the total carbon stored in forest ecosystems is found in boreal forests (the rest is stored in tropical and temperate forests). Plants, soils, and oceans are all natural carbon sinks that absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted in the atmosphere. However, today humans are producing more CO2 than can be absorbed by nature (image below).

A graph comparing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere relative to its storage. Boreal forests are a significant contributor to the “soil and plants” storage category (from Penche, 2021).

  • At the rate of carbon emissions today, scientists predict that natural carbon sinks such as boreal forests may reach their absorption capacity by 2050. Today, there is more carbon emission than nature (oceans, soils, and plants) can process, which leads to carbon being stored in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas and contributing to global warming (graph above).
  • The theme of deforestation in this exhibit shines a light on the role of the boreal forest’s trees in storing CO2. Cutting down trees reduces the amount of carbon sinks in the world. In addition, the act of deforestation itself releases CO2 into the atmosphere, as the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere by burning (image below) or natural rotting.

Toirkens, Jeroen, Netherlands, 1971–. Fire, 2019. Photograph showing trees burned from massive boreal forest fires in Russia. Such wildfires release a large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere (from Jeroen Toirkens Photography, 2020).

  • The Borealis exhibit also depicts wildfires in boreal forests of Russia (image above), and how they are extinguished from the air. However, if the forest fires are not considered to cause any “economical damage,” meaning they are not endangering any infrastructures nor reducing profits of logging companies, they are not extinguished. Like deforestation, these fires release CO2 into the atmosphere. Although wildfires are naturally occurring, increased temperatures due to global warming mean these fires occur more often and larger carbon sinks are destroyed.  
  • Although the exhibit explores the present-day boreal forests in Alaska, Canada, Scotland, Norway, Russia, and Japan, the area occupied by this biome may shrink in the future as a result of the geographical shifting of biomes due to global warming. Since the last maximum ice advance (18,000 years ago), environmental biomes have slowly shifted northward as the climate became warmer (images below). This trend is continuing with the current accelerated anthropogenically enhanced warming. As boreal forests require cold temperatures and are already restricted to the northernmost regions of the globe, there is no place for them to migrate to, and their aerial extent is expected to be reduced.

These maps illustrate how climate change has affected the geographical distribution of various forest types in eastern North America since the last maximum ice advance 18,000 years ago (map on the left). Following the last Ice Age, all the terrestrial biomes, including the boreal forest, have shifted northward to cooler climates to which they are adapted (map on the right; present = 1980s). With continuing global warming, the geographical area for additional northward migration is restricted, and the distribution of boreal forests is expected to be reduced (from Prothero and Dott, 2010, after Mayewski et al., 1981, and Delcourt and Delcourt, 1984).

References and additional resources

How to cite this page:

Borealis: Life in the Woods (2021-2022) by Jeroen Toirkens and Jelle Brandt Corstius. (2024, November 24). Climate in Global Cultures and Histories: Promoting Climate Literacy Across Disciplines. Retrieved Month Date, Year, from https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/borealis-life-in-the-woods-2021-2022.