Abiotic Stressor: Storms

Rijeka

2013

Artikel aus einer ZeitschriftUnselbständiges Werk

16961

200179401

Storms have been the predominating natural disturbance that seriously affected the forest ecosystems in Europe. Storms tend to occur more frequently and intensively, leading to more serious damages in recent decades. Over 130 separate storm events that induced noticeable damages to forests were identified during 1950 2010 [1]. Based on the percentage of growing stock that were damaged, 11 most catastrophic windthrows were identified: January 1953, September 1967, September 1969, November 1972, October 1987, January-March 1990, December 1999, November 2004, January 2005, January 2007, January 2009. The total damage by various disturbances to Europe forests is illustrated in Figure 1[3], from which it can be easily indentified that windthrows is the most significant nature disturbances. As regard to seasonal distribution of storm events, winter storms are more common than summer storms. The overwhelmingly majority of storm damages were found between November and January. It is also important to notice that some storm events might not make significant damage in large areas, but could also be extremely devastating at local level, causing catastrophic losses to local forest owners at a certain region.