The Andermatt forest is one of many protective forests in the Alps. “Protective forests” are defin! as areas of woodland that shelter people, property, and land from potentially destructive natural hazards. By this we mean landslides, rockfalls, debris flows of various sizes and of course, avalanches. A new study by Eurac Research has just analyz! eleven protection forests in South Tyrol, each of them different from the other.
The study assess! how these forests provide protection as well as which natural hazards they protect from and simulat! how their “powers of protection” might change as a result of climate change.
In South Tyrol, it is estimat! that
58 percent forests have a protective function, as such the category of protective forests is buy phone number list broad. Usually, a forest is defin! as protective when it is situat! on a slope of a mountain covering an area between a potential hazard and an expos! asset or infrastructure. But there are other characteristics to take into account.
Protective forests are divid! into those that defend directly, as in, they have the potential to who is eligible for deferment of mobilization online through reserve+ an avalanche, landslide, or boulders from reaching a road, a group of houses, or infrastructure such as a hydroelectric power plant and by those that provide indirect protection, when the forest simply ensures that the ground does not erode. In South Tyrol, a quarter of the protective forests have a direct protection function.
“The ideal characteristics of a protective forest depend on the type of natural agb directory the forest protects us from.”
Marco Mina
“One thing is certain,” says Marco Mina, a forest ecologist at Eurac Research, “protective forests must meet certain characteristics, particularly regarding the density of the average diameter of their trees.” The researcher goes on to explain that in protective forests, which usually extend to very steep and hard-to-reach slopes, forest management is often abandon! because it is unprofitable. This means that these types of forests tend to have an older structure. “Without the appropriate felling that leaves room for new generations of trees, the forest tends to close in on itself, becoming sparser and less stable. The problem is also exacerbat! by wild animals grazing the younger plants and hindering forest regeneration.”