Study supported by the Forest Development Fund (agreement No. 25-00-S0MF01-000003)
On 11 December 2019, the European Commission (EC) issued a communication entitled 'European Green Deal' or 'European Green Deal'. Building on the European Green Deal, on 20 May 2020, the EC issued a communication on the 'EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030'.
The aim of the Study is to contribute to the implementation of the European Union Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and the application of the "Forestry Guidelines closer to Nature" (hereinafter – the EC Guidelines) proposed by the European Commission (EC) to the conditions of Latvia.
The tasks of the Study:
- To identify and describe the areas where EU guidelines could be applied while maintaining forest stand productivity and vitality in the long term.
A detailed literature review on the factors affecting forest stand productivity and vitality and their relation to the natural disturbance regime in hemiboreal forests was conducted. When evaluating EU guidelines for closer to nature forest management, it was found that they are intended for all forests where resource extraction is planned. However, they allow for varying management intensities (ranging, for example, from the preservation of ecological trees and other structures important for biodiversity, to the transition to selective logging, including the preservation of structures important for biodiversity).
Publicly available information from State Forest Service, Nature Proction agency, and Latvian Geospatial information agency has been compiled, and a map has been created showing the likely area of natural disturbance regimes of forest stands productivity (forest type trophic group), susceptibility to windthrow (edaphic groups), and slope gradient group. Maps can be used to calculate their proportion in different territorial units according to needs. Territorial units can be administrative (districts, parishes) or landscape-based, or, for example, 1 km2 squares or hexagons. It has been concluded that it is most successful to simultaneously maintain productivity and vitality in mesotrophic dry forest types (Ln, Dm, Vr), which have flat terrain. A review section has been prepared on areas where EU guidelines could be applied while simultaneously maintaining forest stand productivity in the long term. - To develop criteria and prepare a proposal for designating forest areas where the primary objective would be to ensure timber availability for the national economy, using the maximum annually obtainable total and highest-quality assortments over the long term (until the end of the century) as an indicator.
Based on the literature, criteria have been defined for determining forest areas where the primary objective could be to ensure the availability of timber for the national economy. In fact, this is a matter of land planning, land-use efficiency, and the types of land use and categories of real estate usage purposes. When calculating the "net strategy" for timber cultivation, the calculations are based on the growth model (AGM) developed by LSFRI 'Silava'. The modeling was done for forest stand of high site productivity for for pine, spruce and birch. - To assess how the delineation of the areas identified in Task 2 would affect the achievement of the objectives set out in the EC guidelines and other documents relevant to the forestry sector, including identifying the aspects for which data is currently lacking and further research is needed to make such a justified assessment.
In potentially relevant documents for the forestry sector (10% strict protection and 20% protection as provided in the EU Nature Restoration Regulation) from the national territory. The alignment of objectives has been evaluated using the information on the Nature conervation agency planned specially protected forest habitats. A list of missing information has been created and proposals for further research have been prepared.