Chronic browsing and inappropriate stand management are often discussed as causes for recruitment failure of tree species in temperate mixed uneven-aged forests. Continuous cover forestry is thought to produce conditions that are conducive to the recruitment of native shade-tolerant and browse-sensitive tree species such as silver fir (Abies alba Mill.). This study used density-dependent matrix population models parameterized for three main types of fir forests in Europe (53 048 measured trees from 3183 permanent sample plots) to project the effects of Business-As-Usual uneven-aged management (BAU) and three alternative management scenarios (Non-Intervention(NON), Profit Maximization (MAX) and stand management optimized for increasing recruitment (CONS)) on fir population dynamics over 100 years. BAU, MAX and, particularly, CONS improved the population parameters if natural recruitment was sufficient regardless of site, current and historical logging and transient and equilibrium growth rates under NON. In chronically browsed and recruitment-limited fir populations with transient and equilibrium growth rates ,1 under NON, the demographic ageing of fir can only be halted temporarily if silviculture is optimized for conservation, but none of the scenarios can prevent fir from decline. Our results suggest that a number of uneven-aged silvicultural systems, including more profit-oriented, can improve the demography of fir in central European mountain forests. However, they are not a pragmatic method to conserve fir when a population suffers from limited recruitment that causes an unmanaged population to decline.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4305062
Forest inventorying and reporting at the national level have been known for about one hundred years. For more than fifty years, forestry has also been part of international reporting. The Slovenian forestry industry presently drafts two types of annual forest reports. Additionally, it participates in creating international reports on forest health and greenhouse emissions and in preparing occasional reports on forest resources, carried out within the UN/FAO and the process of Forest Europe. This research aimed to assess the differences between the Slovene forest reporting and the reporting of selected countries, with the support of content analysis. The comparison was carried out with the use of the pan-European indicators of sustainable forest management. In addition to the Slovene reports, the reports on sustainable forest management and annual forest reports of Austria, Switzerland, Finland, France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Spain were selected. The analysis of contents revealed that the Slovene reporting is mostly inefficient. While the forest reports of selected countries directly support forestry, environmental, energy and wood industry policy as well as the forestry profession, the Slovene reports lack end-users. Because of insufficient information, the reports cannot be used for shaping sectoral policies, steering forest development, and carrying out international reporting.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4539814