EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - UNESCO World Heritage

Pre-proposal No 1 MICKING PRIMEVAL FORESTS PATTERNS
IN NATURE-BASED FOREST RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (“PRIMEFOR”)
1. Network motivation and aims:
According to the Strategic Research Agenda of the Forests Based Sector’s Technological Platform, the competitiveness of the sector depends
entirely on ensuring the sustainable character of forestry, on using research to make wood a more predictable engineering material, and on
reducing the input of material, energy and work per unit wood and wood based-products. All these assumptions seem to be seriously compromised:
The burning of fossil fuels may lead to problems in applying the traditional concept of sustainable forestry, in which site factors are
assumed steady-state (Wagonner 1994, Kauppi 1995). The predictability of wood as material is limited due to wood market volatility, amplified
by wood availability being a delayed function of the demand. And finally, the profit margins from wood utilization are often not high enough
to cover the necessary silvicultural measures in many countries (Commarmot et al. 2000). In this situation, nature-based management of forest
resources becomes a principal doctrine aimed to narrow the gap between managed and nature forests patterns, to ensure higher forests stability,
to provide for a diversified supply of wood and to achieve desired forests functions at lower costs. Therefore, the major scientific aim of
this network is to find new ways of how substantially more natural patterns and processes normally taking place in the primeval forests can be
harnessed for the benefit of forest resources management under global changes. Owing to the network structure, the early stage researcher
(ESR) will for the first time get an integral view of nature forests ecosystems on distinct sites in the Temperate Zone of Europe. That experience
accompanied by a highly interdisciplinary approach will create a new breed of scientists able to pose clear scientific questions even in the
face of considerably complex ecosystem patterns and demands on forest functions. Trained under the supervision of acclaimed scientists,
they will be able to resolve the challenge of a science-based and economically viable management of forest ecosystems in a possibly transient,
non-steady-state environment.
2. Scientific objectives
The research training activities will unfold around the principal axis, constituted by the network’s scientific objectives. These objectives will be
achieved within the framework of tasks which are described in detail in the Work Plan section (4):
a) To develop a comprehensive understanding of the causes for the variation in ecological patterns and processes within temperate primeval
forests: Some of the results from primeval forest research could have been generalized, such as the developmental independence of small
forest segments in beech primeval forests on mesotrophic sites. Further and more complex research covering the entire spectrum of site
conditions will yield exceptional data and provide ESR with a unique training opportunity in field methods.
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.
c) To extract the past and assess the current and future global climate change impact on temperate forests: Primeval forests, owing to a negligible
human intervention, provide us with a window of opportunity to estimate the interference of climate fluctuations with the growth dynamics
of tree populations. Any changes however must be evaluated and judged against the natural dynamics.
d) To resolve the introduction and maintenance of natural forests patterns in managed forests: The opportunities for a cost-effective and ecologically
sound approach, based on the introduction of selected processes and patterns of the primeval forests ecosystems into the forest
management toolbox, depend on the site conditions, its past use, previous forest management and its current and future goals. Further research
shall therefore focus on what other forest structures are most suitable to benefit from self-regulating processes and how these structures
can be achieved.
3. Current international state-of-the-art and scientific originality of the project
The network objectives have been set after a thorough evaluation of both successes and failures in primeval forest research and in the transfer
of its results into sustainable forestry.
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3.1 Conceptual foundations and the transfer of knowledge from primeval to managed forests
Brang (2005) reviewed the concept of virgin forests as a knowledge source for central European silviculture. Due to the case-study character
of the available knowledge, there continues to be disagreement about the degree to which the processes observed in primeval
forests can legitimately be incorporated into the managed forests dynamics. Small-scale regeneration methods, such as progressive
felling by small groups and single tree or group selection systems correspond best to the natural regeneration processes in undisturbed
beech forests. But a number of other patterns occurring in primeval forests can potentially be used in forest management after further
research of the opening opportunities, for instance the substitution of tending and thinning by natural regeneration, suppression and
released of target trees by auxiliary trees; growing of mosaic forests composed of small patches covered by bio-groups of different age,
as devised from the textural primeval forests patterns or the mimicking of the biometric parameters of oak crowns able to sustain the