Silvicultural planning in protective forests in the European Alps
Protection is of vital importance to man and his activities in the European Alps, and the sustainability of non-intervention is therefore an important issue: in the short to medium term the failure to manage these forests leads to intolerable risks for people who live in and make a living in alpine valleys.
All forests have a general protective role but there are substantial differences between protective functions: some forests have a generic protective role, contributing to surface soil conservation, watershed management and air quality. Other forests have a direct role in protecting people, buildings, road and rail traffic and power supplies from natural hazards: avalanches, rock falls, landslides, erosion and floods. These forest are "forest with a direct protective function".
The most important features of a protective forest are its stability properties. From a silvicultural point of view the stability of a protective forest stand is its ability to reliably and continuously carry out its functions and, if the first criteria is respected, its ability to maintain its structure and vitality in the face of internal and external influences.
Since the activities necessary to maintain and improve stability properties are costly and demanding, an acceptable rather than the ideal degree of stability should be aimed at in order to insure the functions required of the protective forest over a 20-50 year period. Interventions aimed at achieving this minimum degree of stability are collectively referred to as minimal tending for protective forests.
