Slovakia, as a member of the Network INTEGRATE, established two new Martelescope sites at the end of the year 2018.
by Eva Hušťáková
The sites are located very close to Bratislava city, at a specific locality with the name „Devínska kobyla” in the Little Carpathian Mountains. The area is managed by the forest state enterprise LESY Slovenskej republiky, branch Smolenice. Forest managers selected two types of stands: predominantly beech and oak. The two sites are only a few kilometres away from each other, at an altitude of 300 m and 340 m above sea level. Both forests are more than 100 years old. Experts from our National Forest Centre in Zvolen realized measuring of all trees on a rectangular square of 100x100m. Consequently, they identified microhabitats on all trees according to the reference field list, which is part of the tree microhabitats catalogue developed by the European Forest Institute (Kraus et al. 2016). The total number of trees was 203 in the beech plot and 409 in the oak plot.
There is still a lot of work to do, but the first steps have been implemented. The state forest enterprise would like to use these localities for communication purposes, because Bratislava citizens like this forest very much and therefore frequently visit it. The Marteloscope localities offer a great opportunity to inform and discuss principles of sustainable forest management with the public, policy makers and the media. Furthermore, foresters can on the spot explain forest ecosystem services and showcase how forest management integrates measures for nature conservation.
