I am afraid, that around Mediterraen the most important problem will be available water. With continuously increasing droughts will finaly disappear forests, i.e. the most important part of the mechanism called BioPump, which moves moist air from above the oceans into continents in summer. As early as in Christopher Columbus time he wrote, that "... when we approached forested islands, it was raining every hour there. When the forests were eliminated bu coming civilization, rains mostly disappeared and even fog became rare...". So after the islands will come continents.

Tis way it happened with all previous civilizations in EuroAsia as well as Americas.

People still could stop this trend by systematic forestation until trees could grow under worsening conditions, but our civilization is neglecting it and go on in destroying forests, possibly until it will be too late. Jan

I agree with you Jan,

But can you shorthly explain or give an example of a forest ecosystem service and a possible threshold with respect to that service?

I mean an apparenlty simple example would be wood production as a forest service. The threshold of th-is ecoystem service will strongly depend on the type of forest.

In Europe quite a lot of forests have especially been planted for production purposes. Hence the threshold will be different from that of a tropical forest,

When a tropical forst is completely cut over large areas, it will never grow back into the same natural climax state.

Question even is? Will we in Europe ever see regrowth of the natural forests which we have been cutting away during centuries? I think we have already passed the threshold of the ecosystem service as a production forest of European natural forest (climax forest) more than four centuries ago. Don't you think so? According to me the business of ecosystem services does not seem so simple to me.

An ecosystem service for European natural forest which has not passed its limit is hiking in natural forest. Problem is that to go hiking in a European natural forest will require long and polluting journeys to the few spots left on this continent, where you can enjoy this typical ecosystem service.

Cheers,

Frank

Hi Frank,

It is nice to discuss with you such topics, but since we have grown in different countries/habits, we should better define the terms to prevent misunderstanding. E.g., I do not understand well. what you means under Forest Ecosystem Service. This can be taken as building roads into forests, or making shelters for turists there, or harvesting timber and planting trees at the sametime, or distracting people to enter some selected protected areas, etc. E.g., here in Europe (from Northern Lapland to Canary Islands and from Western Portugal to almost Ural mountains) I have seen very different approaches to the forests hidden behnd the same name.I am discussing the issue "what is the forest" in terms of its composition, but also its size with our colleagues - very strong theoretical physicist (V.Gorshkov + A.Makarieva) working in climatological department. Well, we can easily recognize large groups of trees as a forest e.g., from the grassland, but functionally spoken, is 1 ha large forest stand in the middle of a half continent size of steppe, really forest (and vice versa)? Would be 1% of the forested area better? or 10% (say Netherlands)? or 33% (say Mid.Europe) or 99% (say parts of Siberia or canada)?? I am afraid, that for hiking in natural forests we shouild go to these 99% forested regions, because all forests were several times cut off, or burned and replaced by fields or meadows or settlementys in Europe. Once we worked in a 7000 ha large fenced forest near Rome (which was owned by the Italian president) and when accidentaly hit a stone by feet, this stone was a marble tile from a bathroom, because these forests covered large old settlement. We have a big originally forested areas in Sumava moutains (South Bohemia), which (irrespectively that being planted by spruce, looks in many places nice and therefore were decleared "National park" by nature lowers. The aim was to plant artificially more broadleaf species there, in order to change a monocultures to mix forests, which than could be gently managed to become more "natural like". However a bit later a "superprotector" group came and they did not allowed to stop bark beetle invasion, whichh came from the similar park in Germany. The results was, that presently we have about 15-20 000 ha of dead forests there (and may be shortly more, if a dry year will come). I calculated from the Hydrometeorological Institute records, that cumulated water deficit (Precip-PET) reached the value of over 5m (5000 mm) over last 20 years and is increasing. Do we want this? Jan

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Hi Jan,

No, the last thing you mentioned, is for sure not what I want in Europe to happen, namely that (a planted semi- monoculture) like Sumava would be protected or at least stay untouched while the bark beetle can destroy it. That's a stupid idea of course. It would indeed have been better to slowly increase the number of indigeneous (and decidous) trees and undergrowth species so that the Sumava forest would be able to grow into a more natural forest and especially would be more resisitant to diseases (like that of the bark beetle).

With ecosystem services I mean any service which can be expected to be delivered or even required from a forest. This can be (durable) wood production, leasure, silence, nordic skiing, hunting, hiking, camping, recreation, protection of wildlife habitats. etceterea, Anything you can ever imagine a forest to offer you and humanity can be designated as a forest ecoystem.service. Evidently a forest ecosystem service can only typically with the highest probability be rendered by a forest. For example on can go hunting in agricultural land as well or in bogs, not only in forests, But forests are safe havens for wildlife in Europe, because they generally have the largest unfragmented surface areas and hence are less prone to external inflences from anthropogenic origin a condition for high biodiversity and lots of wildlife. One can enjoy silence or passive tourism as well in Southern European garrigue in the mountains as well for the same reason.

But clearly one cannot ask all ecosystem services at once and at the same time from a forest. It would put the pressure too high.

So choices have to be made. And I think that you are on the right track in that you first try to answer the question, what the hell is a forest? And how old does it have to be to earn that name, how large does its biodiversity have to be and so on, how many species of tress, undergrowth,animals, fungae. Once these questions have been answered, one can make a catalogue of forests which deserve that name for the better or the worse, and also those forests for which the decision to render only a few ecosystem services under which the most important is wood production has already bene made before us. For me that's not a forst but a wood plantation. See what I mean. In that case the decision about the ecosystem service has already been made by one of your predecessors.

It is the same story when a nature protection organisation does not want to listen to experienced foresters by the way. Actually they are at the origin af a large scale degradation of the Sumava forest due to the bark beetle and lack of diversification of the tree species, which could have stopped the degradation and started a trend towards a more natural forest by now

Did you know that the Minister of Environment in Flanders has a decree now which says that a round point on a highway road in a forest as well as the sides of this road is forest as well? Th reson why she redefined these road parts to forest is simple. It helped here in stating that the surface area of forest in Flanders had increased during her government to 6%. Grezat no? How stupid can you be?

So I think that we are pretty close in our views on the functions of a forest. What do you think Jan?

Frank

Hi. There is a nice article (in Spanish) about insular forest ecosystems of the Canary Islands and their value for humans. You can read the text here: http://www.rseapt.com/publicaciones/periodicas/157-boletin-de-la-real-sociedad-economica-de-amigos-del-pais-de-tenerife-2010-con-la-memoria-del-ano-20.