Abstract

Monitoring of Sudety Mountains as a base for environment protection
Track: Forestry
Authors: Radomir Balazy, Krzysztof Sterenczak

The Western Sudety Mountains are the place of a spectacular ecological disaster. The region's forests situated at the border junction of Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland died on a mass scale in the 1970's and 1980's. The area affected by full deforestation exceeded 15,000 ha and some more hectares were seriously damaged. Today a set of anthropoghenic, biotic and abiotic factors are considered to have been the reason for that enormous disaster. Indeed, a change in the species composition into spruce monocultures and a disturbance of the soil environment caused by acid rains are perhaps the key factors that caused the tragedy.
Has the question been fully answered which factors mostly caused the weakening of Sudety Mountains forests? So far, it hasn't. Although there were many theories, until now nobody knows why certain areas suffered from full deforestation and others maintained their forest cover in an almost unchanged state.