The Goal

The goal of the project is the establishment of an Austrianwide network of natural forest reserves which is representative for all forest communities. This network will be used for the development of ecologically-oriented nature-based silviculture.

Existing and new permanent sample plots which are to be established will be used to identify the type of natural forest communities as a reference plot for the various ecological inventories (dead wood stock, biotop evaluation, hemeroby, reproduction behaviour, biodiversity, etc.) and for research into and the documentation of forest evolution under the influence of human action on a long term basis.

Until now 180 forest reserves covering an area of 8.272 ha have been included in the national network. Reserve data are entered into a Forest Reserve Database. Some of these data were included in an international Forest Reserve Database located at the European Forest Institute.

The Team

A. Boineburg, H. Steiner, K.-M. Schweinzer, G. Frank, G. Gollobich 

The project “Natural Forest Reserves” is managed by a team of four researchers, under the leadership of Dr. Georg Frank. Technical concept and coordination of the research work and implementation in the natural forest reserves is carried out by Dr. Georg Frank. The establishment, data collection and monitoring of the reserves is undertaken by the whole team. Dipl.-Ing. Karl-Manfred Schweinzer is responsible for the conceptual design and update of the database. For details on the individual collaborators please refer to the homepage of the individual people.