ZLV Online

Abstrakt

From the perspective of the nutrient cycle, forestry is usually considered to be a long-term sustainable activity. The nutritional output from the ecosystem represented by timber harvesting should be compensated by weathering of soil particles and atmospheric deposition. This balance is enabled on one hand by the long interval of harvesting, which is on average 80 to 150 years; and on the other hand by the properties of wood, which consists mainly of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen – elements gained by plants from the atmosphere and water. The ideal equilibrium, however, is often disrupted by the long-term impacts of air pollution or by intensive forest management (whole tree harvesting, litter ranking, energy wood production). The article reviews the methods of leaf analysis for forest nutrition assessment and also focuses on the nutrition stock in other compartments of the tree biomass, such as the stem, branches or roots.