General Problems of Forest Environment Protection in Poland

Szujecki, A. (1989). General Problems of Forest Environment Protection in Poland. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-89-073

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Abstract

From the very beginning of mankind, forests affected the shape of human civilization by supplying environmental values and food, wood and its derivatives harvested in the course of merciless exploitation. Changes in the environment caused by human activity included whole forest biocenoses, which acquired an ever increasing degree of anthropogenic character over considerable expanses of Europe. Destruction of the earth's surface, forest fires, extreme weather factors, disease, outbreaks of noxious insects, and a mass appearance of game animals affected forests in Poland during the last 200 years, but especially in recent decades. Soil degradation is also observed, mainly in oligotrophic habitats of coniferous forests, as a direct consequence of overly intense forest utilization. Century-long changes in the turnover of elements in forest ecosystems overlapped with deposition of air pollutants over the last 40 years.

Poland belongs to the majority of European countries which receive from local sources and from abroad more atmosphere pollutants, e.g., sulphur, than they export. Complex influences of air pollutants under certain weather conditions lead to forest decline. However, trees die sometimes also under low concentrations of pollutants, without signs of insect or fungal activity, even under favorable climatic conditions. In this paper, the inventory of Polish forests, as well as the program for monitoring decline, is discussed and the regionalization of forest decline is shown. Then, counteracting methods against degradation of forest ecosystems used in Polish forestry are presented. I suggest new forest policies and propose a new model of forest management as well as restriction of technical pressures on the forest environment.

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