Management of mountain forests in the hydrology of a landscape, the Czech Republic

F. Šach, V. Švihla, V. Černohous and P. Kantor
Additional contact information
F. Šach: Forestry and Game Management Research Institute, Jíloviště-Strnady, Opočno Research Station, Opočno, Czech Republic
V. Švihla: Beroun, Czech Republic
V. Černohous: Forestry and Game Management Research Institute, Jíloviště-Strnady, Opočno Research Station, Opočno, Czech Republic
P. Kantor: Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

Journal of Forest Science, 2014, vol. 60, issue 1, 42-50

Abstract: Forests important from a water-management perspective cover 723,000 ha of the Czech Republic (CR), i.e. 27.6% of the forest area. These forests play an important role especially in a mountain landscape. Forests decrease peak flood flows, compensate water discharge and represent a source of high-quality fresh water. The optimum hydrological function is provided by forests that are healthy, ecologically stable, diversified, proper to site, growing on a good forest soil, managed by small-area felling and emulating natural processes. For mountain sites of the CR, the optimum proportion of Norway spruce (+ Silver fir) ranges from 70 to 80% and of European beech from 20 to 30%. Clear-cuts due to air pollution disasters led to replacement of the forest stand by perennial grassland increasing stormflows and decreasing the soil water supply to groundwater resources and the quality of water discharged from the forest. Skidding and hauling operations and an improperly constructed and maintained road network increased the surface runoff from a forest. Intraskeletal erosion occurs on pollution-disaster stone fields and in dying forest stands on stony sites. Reforestation of stone fields is necessary for the preservation of forests on stony and bouldery localities and their services for the cultural landscape situated below. In mountain headwaters, torrent control and forest amelioration are of great importance. These decrease peak flood flows, compensate water discharge and reduce bed-load and sediment transport. Forest amelioration enables the reforestation of waterlogged pollution-disaster areas.

Keywords: silvicultural measure; clear-cut; forest soil; water regime; logging operations; intraskeletal erosion; torrent control; forest amelioration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jfs.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/73/2013-JFS.html (text/html)
http://jfs.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/73/2013-JFS.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnljfs:v:60:y:2014:i:1:id:73-2013-jfs

DOI: 10.17221/73/2013-JFS

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Forest Science is currently edited by Mgr. Ilona Procházková

More articles in Journal of Forest Science from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().