Guidelines which support mountain forest management in natural hazard risk mitigation and sustainable forest exploitation have been issued in several European countries. Natural hazard risk mitigation by forest management is based on two central fields of planning and action: 1) analysis of the protective functions and 2) assessment and maintenance (improvement) of the protective effects of forests.
The term "protective function" refers to the task of a forest (woody vegetation) to protect something of value like human settlements and infrastructures from the impacts and damage by adverse climate, or cultural and natural hazards (Tromp 1972 cf. Wullschleger 1982, BUWAL 1996, Brang et al. 2001, Perzl 2014, Perzl & Huber 2014). The setting of values to be protected, and of the protection targets, is primarily a political decision linked to questions of justice and to objectives of regional development (Hess 2011, Perzl & Huber 2014 p. 13). The assignment of (protective) functions to forests or other land reflects the (safety) interests of the society. Safety interests in forest management result from the hazard and damage potentials to assets without consideration of the forest conditions. The concept of the (protective) functions of forests does not include forest conditions, even if the trees of a forest might be a potential danger to assets (e.g. in case of a damage potential by windthrow of trees near buildings or roads). A protective function of forest may also be assigned to non-wooded areas suitable for forest growth and to forests of insufficient protective effects, since afforestation of non-wooded land and forest tending could be appropriate hazard mitigation measures (Perzl & Huber 2014 p. 11, Zeidler & Perzl 2017 p. 19). A protection forest is a forest with a protective function as its primary task in relation to other public interests in forest management (Brang et al. 2001). GreenRisk4ALPs Partnership ; Table of Contents ; Table of Figures ; Table of Tables ; INTRODUCTION ; METHODS AND DATA ; Data about snow avalanche initiation on terrain of forest use ; Data about shallow landslide initiation on terrain of forest use ; Data about rockfall in forests ; RESULTS ; General concepts of the assessment procedures ; NaiS ; SFP ; GSM-N ; GSM-S; ISDW ; The problem of spatial units to assess effects of forests ; Snow avalanche: hazard potential indicators and targets of forest structure.; Snow avalanche: hazard potential indicators; Snow avalanche: protective effect-related characteristics of forest structure ; Landslides: hazard potential indicators and targets of forest structure ; Landslides: hazard potential indicators .; Landslides: protective effect-related characteristics of the forest structure ; Rockfall: hazard potential indicators and targets of forest structure ; Rockfall: hazard potential indicators ; Rockfall: protective effect-related characteristics of forest structure
