Applying landscape ecological principles in sustainable forest management of the floodplain forest in the temperate zone of Europe

Machar I.: Applying landscape ecological principles in sustainable forest management of the floodplain forest in the temperate zone of Europe. Ekologia (Bratislava), Vol. 32, No. 4, p. 369-375, 2013.

European floodplain forests of the temperate climatic zone are an example of an ecosystem in the cultural landscape characterized by an exceptionally high biodiversity. In this usually heavy deforested landscape of the Central and South European river floodplains, which are subjected to intensive agricultural use, the preserved ecosystems of floodplain forests represent important refuges for biotic biodiversity and are invaluable for the ecological landscape stability of the entire floodplain and the wider river basin. Unlike other Central European communities, whereby constant ecological conditions of habitats tend to be preserved even upon changes in ecosystem, the floodplain forests are characterized by a long-term continuous development of ecotopes, conditioning the complex interconnected succession series of ecosystem. The ecological floodplain phenomenon is created by fluvial landscape processes and the conservation of the natural development dynamics of the said fluvial landscape processes is essential for its protection. The landscape structure of floodplain forests is significantly affected by forest management measures, including regeneration methods, silvicultural measures and felling. Floodplain forest management radically affects the biodiversity of the given ecosystems which are listed among habitats of European concern in the Natura 2000 network. Since understanding of the biological nature of forest ecosystems is essential for landscape and ecological planning and sustainable forest management, it is imperative to study ecological processes taking place in the various floodplain forest biotopes in order to be able to define the principles of their management. This article aims to contribute to the process of formulating principles of biodiversity protection and the management strategies for floodplain forest ecosystems, while applying some theories and methods of landscape ecology. The Results section of the article comes in the form of case studies for each topic and draws on original data which were published in the scientific journals or presented at scientific conferences (see References). Some of the presented case studies focus on the Protected Landscape Area Litovelske Pomoravi.