Description of project
The aim of our project is to develop, test and verify a system of forest regeneration and site reclamation on localities that were heavily affected by sand mining, should be reclaimed and (re)joined to forest land resources. A suitable system of forest regeneration should be designed also for environmentally specific forest sites such as frost pockets, salvage clear-cut tracts and degraded air-polluted forest areas. The velocity of the site and forest regeneration is highly important from the viewpoint of forestry, site environment and landscape as well. To expedite the regeneration process, the project intends to test a large-sized bare-rooted planting stock termed “new-generation saplings”. Under above-defined environmental conditions, the large size planting stock itself does not mean a solution. However, a system integrating the high-quality new-generations saplings and well-balanced site reclamation techniques could yield a considerable progress. On degraded or impoverished sites the reclamation techniques will be based on combined biological and chemical amelioration using the modern slow-release amendments serving as the source of nutrients for new forest plantations. Our attention will be given also to the site microclimate. We will concern chiefly on the extreme values of the meteorological characteristics. This is because the climatic extremes are significantly more frequent on large open areas (land mines, salvage clear-cut tracts) than in forest complexes. An evaluation of influence of the initial sapling density on soil and stand microclimate will be another important topic of our project.