Acta Technica Corviniensis

ACTA TECHNICA CORVINIENSIS – BULLETIN of ENGINEERINGRomania’s water supply (excluding the Danube)and 40% of Ukraine’s water supply comes fromthe Carpathians.world's oceans. the carpathians are consideredas one of the critically endangered ecoregions.Figure 1: The Carpathian Mountains Ecoregion,source WWF DCP, 2001Over 1/3 rd of this mountain range of exceptionalgeological, biological and landscape diversityconstitutes the backbone of Romania.Compared to other mountain ranges in Europe,the Carpathians are not exceptionally high. InRomania the highest peaks are below 2.600meters and the mountain is relativelyfragmented, cut by deep valleys and with largedepressions inserted between peaks and highplateaus. This fragmented landscape shaped inmany parts by extensive agricultural practicesand mostly close to nature forestry still harbourslarge areas with little human influence.The Carpathians have many of Europe’s lastgreat wilderness areas as well as rich culturallandscapes, including the continent’s mostextensive tracts of montane and old-growthforest as well as most of the Europeanpopulations of large carnivores.Thanks to their exceptional level of biodiversity,the Carpathian Mountains are included inWWF’s “Global 200” Ecoregion list.The Global Ecoregions is a science-based globalranking of the Earth's most biologicallyoutstanding terrestrial, freshwater and marinehabitats. It provides a critical blueprint forbiodiversity conservation at a global scale.Developed by WWF scientists in collaborationwith regional experts around the world, theGlobal Ecoregions is the first comparativeanalysis of biodiversity to cover every majorhabitat type, spanning 5 continents and all theFig. 2. Global 200, source WWF, 1999 – 2000Fig. 3. Global 200 – critically endangered ecosystemsindicated with the red colour, source WWFChosen as one of the 238 ecoregions around theworld noted for ‘exceptional level ofbiodiversity, such as high species richness orendemism, or those with unusual ecological orevolutionary phenonema, the Carpathians hostEurope’s most extensive tracts of montaneforest, the largest remaining natural mountainbeech and beech/fir forests ecosystems, and thelargest area of old-growth forest left in Europe.The map below shows the old-growth forestsmapped with support from the DutchGovernment in the Romanian Carpathians in2003.The large tracks of still natural forests togetherwith extraordinary, rich, semi-natural habitatssuch as mountain pastures and hay meadows,which are the result of centuries of traditionalmanagement, the region’s biodiversity is142008/ACTA TECHNICA CORVINIENSIS/Tome I