No PL 94-2392 Silvicultural strategies for predicting damage to forests from wind, fire and snow. The scale of the problem is enormous costing the EC hundreds of millions of ECU each year. Snow damage too accounts for an estimated 4 million m 3 every year. Reducing this huge problem largely depends on foresters making appropriate silvicultural decisions in forests and forest stands to minimize the risk of damage. The main problem is that the silvicultural knowledge needed to make these decisions is generally not available at stand level - the basic management unit in forestry practice.
Current approaches are either at a single tree level or generalized at national level.
It is the aim of this project to determine the knowledge needed by foresters at stand level to make silvicultural decisions in relation to the risk of damage. This will be acheived by pooling the knowledge and experience of groups working on single tree and regional studies, to develop a modelling system for use by foresters throughout Europe to aid management decisions as thinning, clear felling and fire hazard fuel clearance while maintaining wood quantity and quality. The first part of the project concentrates on technical studies into stem, root and branch resistance to wind and snow damage, and into ground cover accumulations in terms of fire risk. The project comprises 8 Tasks. A short programme planning stage to formalize information transfers between participants and structure the common data access.