PESFOR-W: Improving the design and environmental effectiveness of woodlands for water Payments for Ecosystem Services

ABSTRACT: The EU Water Framework Directive aims to ensure restoration of Europe?s water bodies to ?good ecological status? by 2027. Many Member States will struggle to meet this target, with around half of EU river catchments currently reporting below standard water quality. Diffuse pollution from agriculture represents a major pressure, affecting over 90% of river basins. Accumulating evidence shows that recent improvements to agricultural practices are benefiting water quality but in many cases will be insufficient to achieve WFD objectives. There is growing support for land use change to help bridge the gap, with a particular focus on targeted tree planting to intercept and reduce the delivery of diffuse pollutants to water. This form of integrated catchment management offers multiple benefits to society but a significant cost to landowners and managers. New economic instruments, in combination with spatial targeting, need to be developed to ensure cost effective solutions - including tree planting for water benefits - are realised. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are flexible, incentive-based mechanisms that could play an important role in promoting land use change to deliver water quality targets. The PESFOR-W COST Action will consolidate learning from existing woodlands for water PES schemes in Europe and help standardize approaches to evaluating the environmental effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of woodland measures. It will also create a European network through which PES schemes can be facilitated, extended and improved, for example by incorporating other ecosystem services linking with aims of the wider forestscarbon policy nexus

Przestrzenne zróżnicowanie cech naturalnego odnowienia sosny zwyczajnej (Pinus sylvestris l.) W rębni zupełnej

Praca przedstawia analizę przestrzennego zróżnicowania cech odnowienia naturalnego sosny zwyczajnej. Wszystkie powierzchnie odnowieniowe powstały w 2006 roku, gleba została przygotowana pługiem leśnym LPZ-75. Powierzchnie te znajdują się w granicach Nadleśnictwa Maskulińskie. Badania terenowe przeprowadzono w 2008 roku. Na dwuletnich samosiewach sosny zwyczajnej zmierzono wysokość od powierzchni gruntu do okółka i od okółka do wierzchołka, co stanowiło odpowiednio przyrost z pierwszego i drugiego roku wzrostu nalotu, określono także jego zagęszczenie w bruździe i na skibie.Dyskusja wyników zawiera opis czynników wewnętrznych i zewnętrznych mogących mieć wpływ na zagęszczenie, wzrost i przyrost wysokości podrostów sosnowych w poszczególnych wydzieleniach

Physical Activity in Forest and Psychological Health Benefits: A Field Experiment with Young Polish Adults

Recently, many studies have been conducted on the impact of various elements of the natural environment, including forests, on human physical and mental health. However, little is known about the level of health benefits resulting from contact with forests depending on the type of physical activity undertaken. Therefore, in order to measure the impact of physical activity on the level of mental relaxation, a randomized experiment was conducted, which took into account three types of human physical activity: walking, cycling, and passive (without movement) observation of the forest. The study was carried out in the same forest and at the same time. Forty young people studying in Warsaw took part in the study. Four psychological questionnaires were used in the project before and after the experiment (Profile of Mood States, Schedule of Positive and Negative Affects, Recovery Scale, Subjective Vitality Scale). A pre-test was also performed in a university classroom. Research has shown that staying in the forest, regardless of the type of physical activity, brings positive health benefits in the form of an increase in positive feelings while reducing negative feelings. The results indicate that people who walk have the broadest range of benefits (cumulative benefits), in the form of less tension, reduced anger, fatigue, depression, increased concentration and greater vigor. Cyclists experienced significant benefits only in the form of reduced depression and greater vigor. The group passively observing the forest achieved statistically significant benefits only in terms of reducing fatigue and improving concentration. However, overall, the between-group results showed no statistically significant differences between the restorative effects of walking, cycling, and viewing the forest landscape. Each analyzed form of contact with the forest has a regenerating/regenerating effect (ROS scale) and contributes to the increase in vitality (SVS scale)