Proceedings of the Workshop - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

conditions. A central task of silvicultural management is to control the competitive
relationships in forests.
This concerns in particular the young stands for interspecific competition control
when young trees are to be favored to understory vegetation such as herbs and
grasses.
During the longest section in the life time of a forest manipulation of intra-specific
competition, such as by thinning, is done by the forest managers to optimize the
qualitative development of stocks.
When, towards the end of a generally over a one hundred years lasting forest
development, an alternation of generations should be initiated and the harvestable
forest should be converted into a profitable consecutive forest stand, silviculture
management develops sustainable concepts of natural regeneration of forests.How is it
then that silvicultural measures can have a positive effect on the global carbon issue?
Locally or regionally already, the choice of tree species, a major component of
forest management, offers substantial opportunities through the use of powerful, i.e.
very productive tree species, to influence carbon sequestration of forests.
But it needs to be kept in mind that highly productive species will meet the claim
of a high carbon sequestration if they are adapted to each location.
This adjustment relates to both the climatic conditions as well as soil science.
Figure 1: Scheme of the natural carbon cycle
Let's first have a look at the climate problem we try to influence by silvicultural
means. The so-called greenhouse effect is caused by greenhouse gases, carbon
dioxide, which is one of them, remains by far the highest share of the global warming
however. Therefore it is important to consider the global carbon cycle (Fig. 1). There
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