http://www.monitoringprirozenychlesu.cz

The Silva Tarouca Research Institute for Landscape and Ornamental Gardening

www.vukoz.cz

The proposed project deals with analysis and monitoring of condition of ecosystems bound to the natural forests of the Czech Republic, which represent significant refugiums of original, rich in species and formerly often widespread elements of the Central European region, such as very old and overmature trees with loose bark or tree cavities, presence of dead wood, etc. These “microsites” are often bound with very demanding and specialized organisms which often belong to protected and highly endangered species. Thus the natural forests can rank among the “biodiversity hotspots”. Understanding the natural condition of forest and its dynamics as the starting point for a number of forest conditions in the given type of natural site, as well as the bound organisms, affected by humans to degraded ones, is required for identification and subsequent evaluation of the natural sites and their changes in course of time. The subject and basic objective of the project is to obtain data for repeated evaluations of condition of the natural forest locations based on detailed biological, mensurational and pedological surveys in selected, freely developing reference forest locations which are registered in the Natural Forest Databank of the Czech Republic, as well as to determine the impact of broader landscape context on changes of the natural forest biodiversity. With respect to the project complexity, the project will be split into three, logically related and mutually supplementing parts. These are the following parts: a) monitoring and analyzing of development of natural freely developing forests, b) monitoring and analyzing of model groups of organisms in selected natural forest locations, c) monitoring and analyzing of landscape dynamics. The first part will deal with collection and analysis of the tree and herb layer data, soil conditions and stand structure and texture in the subject locations. The second part will focus on collection and analysis of the data of saproxylic organisms, i.e. organisms depending on dead wood, and species specifically dependent on structural or other parameters typical for natural forests. This part will, in particular, focus on analysis of bioindication groups: bryophytes, fungi (lichen and lignicolous), molluscoid, insect (e.g. beetle or hymenoptera) and bats. The third part will finally conduct analyses of development of landscape cover in broader surrounding of the natural forest locations with focus on changes in core territory sizes, connectivity of natural forest areas and impact of anthropogenic activities and their intensity on the subject organisms and locations as such. Monitoring will be based on full-scale surveys in natural forests in accordance with the uniform data collection and processing methodology and on processing of space data available. Such designed monitoring in a representative network of locations will be used as a model and specifying base for the full-scale monitoring with lower level of details, as well as for applications in the protected forest management. The project outcome will be analysis and monitoring of condition of ecosystems of natural forests. The project outcome will be processed in form of a summary survey report, containing a set of recommendations designated for competent public administration bodies - the target group of the project. The project outputs will not only contribute to better understanding of the natural forest ecology, but mainly will establish the framework for as objective assessment and evaluation of the probable condition and trends of biodiversity development towards the environmental risk factors as possible, including the anthropogenic burden in form of the landscape fragmentation.

Approximately 283 984 EUR