This also underlines that regeneration is extremely important and that potential threats for forest regeneration such as browsing, grazing and entomological risks need to be avoided. These threats lead to a substantial decline in forest regeneration and in a long run to unstable and fragile forests.

Forests in mountainous areas require special silvicultural techniques and have to ensure a continuous coverage of the forested area. To fulfil these targets we focus our work in the following fields:

  • multifunctional role of Mountain forests
  • Mountain forest regeneration

Mountain Forest Silviculture

Forests are one of the key vegetation forms in mountainous areas. These forests fulfill a protection- production- welfare and recreational function and help to guarantee the settlement areas in mountainous regions. For example, it is expected that within the State of Tirol only 15 % may be considered as potential settlement area and without forests this area would be much smaller.

We have 22% of Mountain forests which grow under extreme conditions (e.g. climate, soil, shortage of the vegetation period, etc.). Maintaining forests within mountainous areas for ensuring its multifunctional role (protection, production, tourism) is a key element within silviculture.