CREATION OF AN ECOLOGICAL BASIS FOR SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT IN ROMANIA

In the 70-years history of the present Forest Research and Management Institute, the constant concern for promoting the researches to substantiate the forestry in Romania on natural realities of the environment and forest biocoenoses is most obvious. In this respect, even from the very beginning of the Institute, ample researches have been conducted on: -forest environment (soils, sites, hydrological processes); -ecological behaviour of most of the local or cultivated exotic tree species and of the ecologically indicating grass and undershrub species; -biology and ecological behaviour of animal species (especially game species) and fungi; -forest and site typology and their ecological zoning; -ecological forest disasters (massive defoliations, oaks die-back, industrial pollution,damages caused by game, etc.); -conservation of biological and ecological diversity of species; -forest monitoring. The multiple results of these researches have ecologically substantiated the forest management planning,implementation of operations, seed harvesting, production of seedlings, afforestations, prognosis and control of defoliating species, establishing the productivity of the hunting area and the optimal game populations and collonisation, establishing measures for avoiding the degradation of forest ecosystems and rehabilitation of degraded forests, improvement of degraded lands and regulation of torrential watersheds, etc. Future researches will have to be oriented towards the complex study of the representative forest ecosystems which are still natural, to find out their evolution laws as ecological models for sustainable forest management. Keywords: ecological researches, sustainable forest management, ecological forestry basis, Romanian forestry, Forest Research and Management Institute.