On Sunday, a team of PAN OB - CZRB employees (Prof. Arkadiusz Nowak, Dr. Marcin Kotowski) together with colleagues from Wroclaw University of Life Sciences (Dr. Sebastian Swierszcz) and Opole University (Dr. Grzegorz Kusza) performed a trial experiment in the Opawskie Mountains. It was in the valley of the Biała Głuchołaska River that the Garden's staff helped a year ago to remove the effects of flooding. 

 

The experiment was to see what the difference is between ecosystem retention in a natural deciduous forest and anthropogenic deciduous forest. We made two soil pits in which a special author's structure, the so-called water collector, was embedded. 

 

At the first site in the Bystry Brook Valley, on a slope of about 40 degrees, with a fairly diverse vegetation cover, the presence of a moss layer, dead wood, many species of vascular plants and undergrowth and undergrowth, out of 200 liters of artificial rain, 1m² retained 176 liters of water.

In the case of the second site, in beech habitat, but heavily distorted, without a moss layer, with the occurrence of only one plant species in the undergrowth, retention was 74 liters, i.e. about 5x less! This means that if all the forests in the catchment had a similar structure and composition, the size and strength of the floods would be much smaller.

 

We hope that careful modeling of the results will show exactly by how much.

The experiment performed is to be used to prepare a grant proposal for the December NCN OPUS competition.

 

We would like to thank the Prudnik Forest District for allowing us to enter the forest and perform a trial experiment. We hope for fruitful cooperation with the State Forests and important results for nature conservation and flood protection.