Since 2007 the program called "Enhancing water storage capacity and preventing floods and drought in lowland forest ecosystems" has been implemented in the Polish forests. Its objective is to stop or slow down the outflow of surface water in the vicinity of small catchment areas and to support the development of natural landscape. The activities include, among others, the construction or renovation of several thousand water storage systems in lowland forests throughout the country. One of the major goals of the project is to support ecologically sound methods of water retention. The improvement of water balance will enhance biodiversity in forest ecosystems. This project may become the first large effort in Europe to develop small-scale water retention in forests. It analyzed the small water retention investments data already existing in Tuczno Forest Division. Analysis of the documentation showed that Tuczno Forest Division invests primarily cheap small water retention objects, environmentally friendly, made from ecological materials. These constructions often combine features of road engineering structures with backwater devices (culvert-penstock, dike). In this study, it was found that the depth and capacity of water reservoir in the 100th forest sub-compartment is less than the project intent by 4% and 10%. The cause ...
It has been estimated that over 80% of forest areas in Poland is threatened with fire. Due to the number of fires and burned area, Poland is counted to the group of European countries where fires break out the most frequently. On average, each year and mostly because of human activity, almost 8.5 thousand fires break out resulting in over 7 thousand ha of burned forest area. Many scientists forecast that the climate warming, decline in precipitation amount and prolonging rainless periods will enhance fire risk in forests, which will translate itself not only into an increase in the number of fires, but also will favour their intensive spreading. The aim of presented paper is estimating the operational efficiency of the fire protection system in Polish forests and the effectiveness of fire extinguishing actions in forests, but also recognition of the effect of the forest area management type on fire statistics. Following data series were investigated: of the number of fires, the burned forest area and average fire area for the years 1990-2016 for the forests under the management of the State Forests National Forest Holding (State Forests NFH) and other managements. Determined trends were analysed by means of Mann-Kendall ...
