COST Action E 52 - vTI - Bund.de

the present state of the beech forests with respect to their extent of distribution, plant sociological
composition, management practices, ongoing research, health state, degree of endangerment, genetic
composition of the populations, and conservation strategies of valuable beech genetic resources.
With this publication an earlier publication of 1993: “The scientific basis for the evaluation of the
genetic resources of beech – Proceedings of an EC workshop”, edited by H.-J. Muhs is updated
comprehensively by including reports of more countries, reflecting the changes and progress
achieved. For example, air pollution is not harming the beech ecosystems as much as it used to, while
concurrently the threat due to climate change has increased. To account for this change differing
approaches have been adopted. The high ecological value of beech has been recognised and has led
to policies and programmes to convert pure conifer forests into mixed forests with considerable
area increases of beech. Additional seed stands have been approved in many countries and artificial
regeneration of beech has been implemented increasingly. Silviculture has changed widely. Beech
forests are managed progressively more in closed-canopy shelterwood systems where crop trees are
selected already at a younger stage and, by giving these more room, an earlier exploitable trunk size
is reached. The economic value of beech timber has risen as the demand for wood has increased
generally and beech wood can replace many tropical timbers due to its technological properties.
Finally, in most countries in situ gene conservation stands have been registered and underlie special
management practices to maintain a widest possible genetic diversity. The aforementioned manifold
changes show that it was highly necessary to give record of them in the present publication, which
also gives valuable information of recent inventories in different countries of the total and reduced
area covered by beech stands as well as data of the standing volume of beech timber.
It remains to thank all authors providing detailed reports of the state of beech forests in each of their
countries. The funding of the printing by the European Science Foundation, Brussels, is gratefully
acknowledged. Finally, it is especially appreciated that Josef Frýdl, Petr Novotný and John Fennessy
volunteered to undertake the tedious job of editing this publication!
Grosshansdorf, November, 2010
Georg von Wühlisch,
Chairman of COST Action E52
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