EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - UNESCO World Heritage

IV. Promoting risk management and prevention of disasters
Nature-based management of forests
Landslides, floods, forest fires, windthrow and windbreak pose major threat to mountainous
areas such as the Carpathians. On multiple occasions, the availability and safety of natural
resources, as well as the safety and quality of life of citizens living in the affected areas have
been seriously compromised or severely degraded for a long period of time. However forests
that exist in balance with site conditions provide a high level of protection against such
disasters.
For instance, forest canopies, manly those in natural or primeval forests featuring a multilayer
structure, exert a smoothing effect on throughfall and the development and subsequent
transmission of pressure waves down the soil profile, which can cause a slope to co collapse
(Keim, Weiler, Skaugset). Also, complex forest stands can respond much more rapidly to an
increased soil water content during or after strong rainfall events. It has been shown that in
beech forests, the surpressed trees can increase their transpiration rate as much as five times
compared to main canopy trees. Normally, surpressed trees are present only in close-to-nature
forests because they are removed form managed forests at an early stage of a forest stand
development. In that way, nature-based forest structures and textural patterns function as
important flood avoidance factors. In addition, rich forest structures are typical of unevenaged
stands that are much less prone to windthrow, because the structural patterns dissipate
the wind energy and prevent the synchronization of trees oscillations. Also the windbreak is
less frequent, as the exposure of trees to winds from their origin leads to the formation of
stems having their centres of gravity much lower that in trees growing in monocultures. Their
crowns are conical and narrow, providing winds with little resistance. As a result of
comparatively low disturbances frequency and biodiversity they sustain (Duelli), natural
forests suffer much less from forest fires that often rage on windthrow or windbreak areas, e.
g. most recently in the High Tatras, where settlements had to evacuated.
Conceptual foundations
Regulation capacity of primeval forests ecosystems sustains ecological processes and the vital
environmental functions, such slope stability protection, torrent control, retention,
accumulation, filtration and the carbon sequestration. Functions provided by primeval forests
are often assumed superior to functions fulfilled by managed forest. However, this line
argument deserves a scientific scrutiny, because multiple evidences indicate that certain
combinations of these functions can not be achieved at the same time. A reliable and accurate
determination of ecological and environmental functional capacity of forests is the
fundamental prerequisity for sustainable, close-to-nature and adaptive forestry under global
changes.
Objectives
b) To form a self-contained picture of the temperate primeval forests functional
capacity: Most temperate primeval show an outstanding performance in terms of biomass
production, the ecological resistance and resilience, biodiversity, preventing erosion, retention
and carbon accumulation. Not always, however, these functions are provided simultaneously.
In the light of increasing efforts to employ natural processes in forest management, there is an
urgent need to determine the effects of natural patterns and processes on forest functions.
Deliverables:
- Nature based management of forests resources in the Carpathians: research on a
compendium (textbook), dissemination workshops for policy makers, workshops for end
users (owners, managers)
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