The black timber bark beetle, Xylosandrus germanus (Blandford 1894), is a new species for Romanian fauna and a potential invasive pest in our forests, orchards and vineyards, but there is little information about it in our scientific literature. Consequently, a short synthesis of the knowledge concerning the biology, ecology, damages, survey and control of the pest, is presented for the foresters, as well as for owners of orchards and vineyards. Preliminary data on its distribution and flight activity suggest that the pest may already be present in many zones of the country and that would have a generation per year.

In Romania long term contracts for the selling of timber from public forests have been implemented in 2002 for a period of 10 years as a support for investments in wood processing companies. Currently there is a public debate about their efficiency considering their impact on the concentration of timber demand in the hands of the companies which have accessed such contracts. In this context the paper analysis the economic efficiency of the implementation of long term contracts in the Forest Department Suceava considering the transactions of a processing company specialized on beech timber. Methodologically the paper uses two sets of data: 167 stands sold based on long-term contracts in the period 2009-2013 and 1725 stands sold in public actions from 2009 to 2011. The second set of data has been used for a regression analysis as to identify the relation between the stumpage prices obtain in public auctions and the stand characteristics seen as explanatory variables. The resulted regression model was employed to predict the stumpage value for those stands sold via long-term contracts in the scenario they have been sold by public auction. The results show that for the analysed period the prices obtained from long-term contracts have been 32% higher compared with the prices from public auction. Nevertheless the results are interpreted in the particular context provided by the limited competition on the beech market and the decrease of the timber prices brought by the 2009 financial crises. The findings have policy implications for the future development and use of long-term contracts.

Plopul (Populus spp.) joacă un rol important în economia forestieră mondială, răspunzând necesităților de a obține producții ridicate de biomasă în timp scurt. Culturile cu ciclu scurt de producție au o dezvoltare continuă în România. Numeroase studii au fost dezvoltate pentru identificarea clonelor cu productivitatea cea mai ridicată în contextul unor tehnologii adegvate. Scopul acestui studiu a fost a înregistra creșterile anuale în diametru, înălțime și volum, într-o cultură experimentală de plop, cu un ciclu de producție de 5 ani. Culturile de plop analizate sunt alcătuite din 6 clone de plop hibrid (AF2, AF6, Monviso, A4A, Pannonia și Max4), plantate cu o densitate de 2667 de exemplare ha-1. Rezultatele cercetării arată o diferențiere clară între creșterile clonelor. Cele mai mari creșteri au fost obținute la clone AF2 și AF6 în cinci ani, de aproape 0,038 m3 an-1. Cea mai mică creștere a fost observată pentru clona Max4 cu 0,028 m3.