Vegetation and rejuvenation after disturbance events (windfall, bark beetle infestation) in spruce age class populations in the Gesäuse National Park

In recent years there has been a strong spread of the bark beetle species Yps typographus in spruce stands in the area of the Scheuchegg-Alm. The most intense infestation occurred in 2009 and 2010. In a national park, dead wood should remain in the stock and so spruce, from which the bark beetles had already flown out, were also left in the area of the mentioned bark beetle infestation (in consequence called young open space). However, these remaining standing dead logs make up only a small part of the total wood volume of the fault area. The larger portion was removed. The flight of the beetle broods was considered too risky for the spruce populations in the area. Due to the location on the edge of the national park, economic forests outside the park would have been endangered. A debarking of tribes, as elsewhere in the national park partially carried out, was completely dispensed with here. As an argument for this, the Department of Forest and Wildlife Management mentioned on the one hand the cost pressure, on the other hand, one was worried that the debarked trunks would slide off and endanger infrastructure below. For these reasons, most of the wood volume was removed and sold in summer 2010 and early summer 2011. For this purpose, it can be noted that in many nature reserves with process nature conservation orientation, the area sizes of which only reach the lower limit for large protected areas, buffer zones for combating the printing press (Yps typographus) are already established outside the protected area. For the Gesäuse National Park, the purchase of the Waag area (adjacent economic area on the Scheuchegg) was already argued in the planning phase with the creation of such a buffer zone. The future implementation of this project would be very welcome from a nature conservation point of view. In the present work, the above-mentioned young open space is first documented with regard to its extent and current vegetation. This characterization should primarily serve as a basis for interpretation of vegetation development for future ascents or monitoring recordings. It can be anticipated that the observation of the open space is advised in the future, as currently tree species or shrub species rejuvenation is completely missing. Forest clearing corridors and shrubs are among the most inadequately studied biotope types in Central Europe (see e.g. WEBER 1999, EXNER & WILLNER 2007); subalpine even more than montane or collin, as it turned out in the course of the research on this text. In order to make a small contribution to closing this knowledge gap in general, as well as to gain clues for the expected vegetation development of the young open space, the second part of the report is devoted to the vegetation and rejuvenation conditions of older forest clearing corridors in the southwestern environment of the Scheuchegg-Alm.