Recreational and health forests of Kremenets district, Ternopil region

Abstract

The article presents the results of the research of recreational and health stands in Kremenets district of Ternopil region. The total area of these forests is 5868.2 hectares. Studies of the typological structure of the forests were carried out according to the methods of AlekseevPohrebniak Forest Typology of Forestry Ecological School. MapInfo Professional 12.0 and a vector map of Ukraine were used to construct a map-scheme of the research region. The typological variety of recreational and health-improving stands is represented from subors (В) to dubravas (D). Thus, dubravas are the largest share among them (72.9% of the total area covered with forest vegetation). The share of the area of sudubravas is 17.7% of the total area covered with forest vegetation; the rest is subors (9.4%). Forest managers have identified 14 types of forests on the territory of the research facility. Thus, there are only 2 types of forest in the subors, 8 types of forest in the sudubravas and 4 types of forests in the dubravas. The most common type of forest in Kremenets district is fresh hornbeam forest represented 71.6% of the total area covered with forest vegetation. The share of fresh hornbeam-oak-pine forest reaches 17.1%; a slightly smaller share is represented by fresh oak-pine subors — 9.4%. The forest species diversity is represented by 22 species of trees. Thus, among these tree species, the largest area is occupied by Common Oak (Quercus robur L.) — 40.6% of the total area covered with forest vegetation, and 29.1% — by Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.). Stands of artificial origin (78.0% of the total area covered with forest vegetation) are dominant; the rest of stands have natural origin (22.0%). The age structure of stands is unbalanced. Middle-aged stands dominate (57.9% of the total area covered with forest vegetation). The share of maturing, young and matured forests ranges from 9.0 to 14.9% of the total forest area. In terms of relative completeness, stands with a density of 0.71–0.8 dominate which is 37.7% of the total area covered with forest vegetation. The share of stands with completeness of 0.61–0.7 (29.9%) and 0.81–0.9 (14.5%) is slightly smaller. The bonitete classes are dominated by stands of the I bonitete class — 51.3% of the total area covered with forest vegetation. Thus, the share of II, Ia and III bonitete classes varies from 7.1 to 23.3% of the total forest area