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European silver fir – an alternative for the dying Norway spruce in Białowieża Forest? Cover

European silver fir – an alternative for the dying Norway spruce in Białowieża Forest?

Open Access
|Jun 2021

Abstract

The condition of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst) in the Białowieża Forest is categorized as a crisis. It is believed that due to the cooling in the Holocene, the then-relict species of the forest, silver fir (Abies alba Mill.), disappeared from its ecosystems and then spruce appeared. Today’s climate change presents challenges to our civilization, including to forestry. However, there is no information at all about how this affected the silver fir in the Białowieża Forest. In the Polish part of the forest (subcompartment 498 Сi, Białowieża Forest District), for the first time a comprehensive study has been carried out on the condition of mature fir trees planted by man and on their progeny. The results indicate high forestry-taxation indicators of trees, resistance to the abiotic factor and competitiveness. Their constitution corresponds to local environmental conditions. However, the disproportionately small number of adult natural regeneration of old firs indicated some kind of malfunction in the mechanism of natural generational change.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ffp-2021-0016 | Journal eISSN: 2199-5907 | Journal ISSN: 0071-6677
Language: English
Page range: 150 - 166
Submitted on: Jan 2, 2021
Accepted on: Feb 23, 2021
Published on: Jun 8, 2021
Published by: Forest Research Institute
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 4 issues per year

© 2021 Aleh Marozau, Miłosz Mielcarek, Grzegorz Krok, Rafał Paluch, Krzysztof Chiliński, published by Forest Research Institute
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.