Norway spurce (Picea abies L.) is the dominating tree species in the Silesian Beskid Mountains. The mountain forests are under severe climatic conditions, such as low temperatures, short growing season, strong winds, high annual precipitation, a long-time snow cover. The forests have been exposed also for about half century to gaseous and dust pollutants emitted by large industrial centres in the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland. Anthropogenic impacts may influence negatively the growth of tree fine roots, can develop ectomycorrhizas and alter the communities of ectomycorrhizal fungi and other microorganisms in soil. Ectomycorrhizal communities at the both forest sites were dominated by the same two morphotypes, which were further studied using the PCP-RFLP analysis for identification of the fungal species

The effect of alkaline air pollutants appears on 98% of the area of forests in Slovakia. Despite a local impact of magnesite air pollutant type is very significant as to the degree and extent of damage. Despite enormous efforts of magnesite plants only a low reduction of dust fallout was reached. While in the years 1978-1979 emission of Mg dust reached 7396.5 tons and emission of SO2 1133.5 tons, in the years 1990-1991 respective figures were 1174.5 tons of Mg dust and 1114 tons of SO2. It means that the amount of emitted SO2 has not changed but the amount of emitted dust has dropped 6.5 times. On the basis of research results the whole attacked territory was divided into four zones of endangerment and there were tested various reclamation and revitalization measures successfully

The main aims of the preparatory stands in air pollution areas are growth development, successfull dynamics of the plants and fast creation of the stand microclimate with favourable effect on soil conditions. This process is documented by height and diameter increment. The results confirm different growth dynamics of the particular species. Larch is the species with the best growth dynamics of selected species on experimental plots. On the other hand, beech is the worst species for reforestation in this condition. One of the causes could be damage by frost

Remarkable differences were found in soil development on three sites. At Modru Dul (the least damaged site) Sopdosols and Inceptisols were found, in Alzbetinska (moderately damaged) Entisols are common, while in Mumlavksa hora (highly damaged) the representative soils are several kind of Podzols, with variable degree of drainage restriction and organic soils. The heavy metal content is always rather low and the vertical distribution does not indicate any appreciable contribution of atmospheric contamination

The magnesite plants Jelsava and Lubenik emitted in the 80s 30 000 tons of magnesite dust and heavy metals and 4000 tons of SO2 per year, what caused an extreme damage to the vegetation in the area around of about 500 km2. For the determination of 3 zones of endangerment we used pollution index values. In each pollution zone we demarcated experimental plots and carried out soil analyses. Forest stands polluted by magnesite dust belong to alkaline air pollution type

Fertilization plays an essential role in forest management on the site being under air pollution load in last years. The soil acidity due to the acid fall-out is markedly worse and at the same time the concentration of calcium, phosphorous, potassium and magnesium are decreasing. The fertilization besides positive influence on height increment could help in adaptation process of plants establishment after transplanting and it can eliminate negative ifluence of anthropogenic conditions of the environmnet

Significant correlations (p0.05) were found between the concentration of elements in the c needles and the distance of the sites from nitrogen ferilizer factory (NFF): the amounts of C, K, Mg, Zn, and Rb in the c+1 needles were increasing, whereas concentrations of N, P, Al, Mn, Cu, Ni, Sr and Cd were decreasing alongside the transect from NFF. Statistical analyses performed on logarithms and estimation of components of variance by maximum likelihood has shown that the age of the needles and the sites were the most important, while year of sampling was much smaller source of variance. Only a few significant differences were found comparing the amount of elements in Scots pine needles collected in four-year space

The paper presents forest damage in Saxony, silvicultural treatment and the choice of tree species, base of the choice of tree species for areas damaged by air pollutants and solving the problems only on interdisciplinary basis

The main objective of this paper is to analyse regeneration regularities of damaged trees during the period of decreased environmental pollution load. Investigations concentrated on Scots pine tree height and radial increment, branch length increment, amount of branches on the verticil and needle and whole crown mass. Model trees were selected in 3 stands located on 3.5, 10 and 21 km from the plant according to their development classes and condition

The contribution summarizes outputs of annual measurements that were made in the eleven-year long period of observation (1991-2001). In this case, the liming had markedly positive effect on prosperity of spruce plantation up to now. The limed variants "surface" and "planting pit" show lower values of the total mortality than the control variant. Furthemore, the mean value of the periodic annual increment of the trees of the control variant is clearly lower than the mean values of the variant "surface" and the variant "planting pit". According to soil analyses the above described forms of liming do not seem to induce any serious negative changes within soil in this case