Pavel Samec

By Aleš Kučera, Pavel Samec, Aleš Bajer, Keith Ronald Skene, Tomáš Vichta, Valerie Vranová, Ram Swaroop Meena and Rahul Datta

Forests play an irreplaceable role in linking the water cycle with the functions of soil. Soil water not only enhances the stability of forests, but also its run-off and evaporation affects the growth of plants in different ecosystems. The forest soil water balance is contextualized within the immediate and more global landscapes, in terms of relations of water to the soil environment and bedrock, participation in the local water cycle within a catchment basin and in the global cycle between ecosystems. Modifications by human civilization can have significant impacts, including erosion intensification, eutrophication, salinization, spreading of single-species plantations, and regime shifts. Forests regulate the movement of water in the soil environment by reducing the intensity of run-off. Such moderated run-off prevents the occurrence of flash floods, maintaining continuous availability of water for plant and human use. Participation of soil water in the cycling of elements in forests is modified by soil organic matter balance. The preservation of hydric functions in forest soils depends on prioritization of water balance restoration in every catchment basin enclosing the local element cycle. More fundamentally, the development of a synergistically interlinked system, centered around the soil-forest-water-civilization nexus, must become an urgent priority.

Part of the book: Soil Moisture Importance

By Pavel Samec, Aleš Kučera and Gabriela Tomášová

Forest degradation impairs ability of the whole landscape adaptation to environmental change. The impacts of forest degradation on landscape are caused by a self-organization decline. At the present time, the self-organization decline was largely due to nitrogen deposition and deforestation which exacerbated impacts of climate change. Nevertheless, forest degradation processes are either reversible or irreversible. Irreversible forest degradation begins with soil damage. In this paper, we present processes of forest soil degradation in relation to vulnerability of regulation adaptability on global environmental change. The regulatory forest capabilities were indicated through soil organic matter sequestration dynamics. We devided the degradation processes into quantitative and qualitative damages of physical or chemical soil properties. Quantitative soil degradation includes irreversible loss of an earth’s body after claim, erosion or desertification, while qualitative degradation consists of predominantly reversible consequences after soil disintegration, leaching, acidification, salinization and intoxication. As a result of deforestation, the forest soil vulnerability is spreading through quantitative degradation replacing hitherto predominantly qualitative changes under continuous vegetation cover. Increasing needs to natural resources using and accompanying waste pollution destroy soil self-organization through biodiversity loss, simplification in functional links among living forms and substance losses from ecosystem. We concluded that subsequent irreversible changes in ecosystem self-organization cause a change of biome potential natural vegetation and the land usability decrease.

Part of the book: Forest Degradation Under Global Change