Silviculture

Establishment and management of permanent experimental plots for evaluation of silvicultural methods
Project No 2002-21, Coordination: Dipl.-Ing. Werner Ruhm

The goals of the project are as follow:
• Reduction of plant numbers and thus, of future tending requirements in the course of stand establishment, without losses in the production of high-quality and valuable timber.
• Efficient establishment methods on dry sites and afforestations providing social and protective benefits.
• Effects of broadleaved softwoods during their integration (forwarders and auxiliary species) in extensive establishment concepts.
• (Temporary) mixtures to increase productivity per hectare.
• Adaptation potential to existing old growth structures and their local and temporal development dynamics during regeneration
• Effects of varying intraspecific competition on the growth behaviour of young oak and beech stands.
• Impacts of intensive tending measures (crown shaping, pruning) on timber quality.

Forest structure
• Studies on seed production, germeability and development of natural regeneration.
• Studies on natural regeneration and browsing stress in a windthrow under cleaned-up and not cleaned-up conditions.
• Concepts for wise stand establishment.

Forest tending
• Concepts for efficient stand tending, especially in mixed stands
• Experimental plots to study the question of " noble hardwood breeding".
• Studies on the influence of pruning to timber quality (timber stain, wound reaction) in Prunus avium.
• Reference plots on the question of broadleaved tree-conifer- mixtures and mixed stands with noble hardwoods.
• Most effective methods of (pre-)commercial thinning in oak.

Online-Publikations:

• Eichenlichtwuchsbetrieb – eine alternative Bewirtschaftungsform
  für den pannonischen Raum (H. Schönauer)