Polski
Feedback, Issue 6/2025
State Council for Nature Conservation – opinion on forest retention
Mar
The State Council for Nature Conservation released a summary of the impact of forest management on flood risks earlier this year. Which measures are most effective? Is modeling a way to avoid risks or a tool in the hands of laymen?
The role of PROP’s opinion
The State Council for Nature Conservation – Commission for Ecosystem Protection on February 12, 2025 issued an opinion on the impact of forest management in mountain and foothill forest ecosystems on flood risk.
Finally, someone described this problem, showed it, put it in order, raising the importance of the water absorption of the forest biocenosis, pointing to laws, regulations and the results of scientific work, showing the causes of change and justifying the proposed actions. This is an excellent document, useful for NGOs in discussions with local governments, forestry, showing the role of mountain forests in inhibiting climate change and the flood wave forming here. Useful for naturalists, tourists, enthusiasts.
The PROP’s opinion directly provides practical guidance suggesting that forest districts adapt to the recommendations of the latest version of the Forest Management Manual (dated December 14, 2023), and more specifically, Surface Water Management Plans. I would call this the Mountain Rainwater Management Strategy. At the very least, it would make it easy to set a goal: don’t release water!
I have recently prepared two educational videos on this topic:
Mountain retention
Retention of rainwater in the mountains is the most important issue for valley dwellers. Their sense of security depends on the level of retention higher up, which is precisely in the forest, in the hand of the forester. Admittedly, the soil, the level of slope, the plants growing in the area are of great importance, but it is he who will determine the place for a retention basin, the place of baffling a stream or an unused road transforming into a drainage trough. It is on the knowledge of the forester that the safety of the village in the valley and the change in the local climate depends. Especially if the holes, ditches and swamps in the area are many. There should be as many as possible, the PROP opinion emphasizes. This is a good thing, because in this matter foresters, as well as their supervisors, often need education and direct support.
The document systematizes the possibilities and justifies legal and common-sense tools for increasing retention in forest ecosystems, and this provides a broader view of the set of different activities that inhibit flows, retain water, counteract both the formation of floods and drought! We have a new Water Law favoring such solutions.
PROP shows hard data from researchers: 30 liters of water retained by each 1m2 of mountain forest. To stir the imagination: each hectare of forest can suck up 300 tons of water, with the authors taking into account only the forest ecosystem’s existing state. And yet there is still a whole arsenal of possibilities inherent in human activity: reconstruction of tree stands, fencing of streams, retention basins, retention of water in roadside ditches, development of skid trails. I would still add cooperation with beavers. A reservoir retaining 40,000 tons of water on 4 hectares of forest and made by beavers in a few days is not unusual. The value of the fallen trees is nowhere near the cost of a retention reservoir of similar capacity, but built over two to three years with 21st century engineering.
Plans with plans, law with law, and reality with reality. According to forest data from the Bielsko-Biała area, 8 km of drainage roads run through every 1 km2 of forest, and management plans indicate that there are to be even more. And there’s not even a mention of particularly dangerous for climate stability skid trails, communication roads and even highways.
And it’s a wonder that the forests can still withstand it!
Flow modeling – who does it?
Flow modeling has been popular recently as a way to manage water. However, there is no faith in me that models of how mountain forests function are compatible with natural reasoning. First, because ecology is a multifaceted system that changes with seasons, weather, and often with political assumptions. In addition to what we can see, the forest also consists of what we can’t see or even hardly study: what’s underground. In recent years, the role of fungi has become important. I’d like to see a simulation of how rainwater works in a model that takes into account the role of fungi in mountain ecosystems, but that’s part of our ignorance. It’s not mechanics. We have too little data to realize its potential!
Instead, we know enough to create models of biocenosis functioning. Yes, they have a number of advantages, especially educational, because they force you to think and search for correlations, but managing the forest on their basis mainly serves to shift responsibility for our own mistakes to global warming and only exacerbates the climate catastrophe.
With innate spite, I went to lectures on digital modeling several times. None of the lecturers is a biologist, and everyone boasts about it! The ones I listened to are hydro-engineers (I checked in the library) who study the resistance of engineering devices to scouring, waterlogging, leaching in order to apply this knowledge to the construction of dams.
There is also a geographer – a search for places suitable for flooding… on a map. So, admittedly, they model, but not what is at stake in the functioning of rainwater in the biocenosis of mountain forests. To them, simulations are used to consider investment risks or to test the resistance of water structures to the advancing element. It’s not enough to consider oneself an expert on ecosystems.
After one of these lectures, I posted a video on YouTube: Virtual Climatology.
Is modeling really useless?
I live in Krzyżówki, the creek flows through my plot. For the previous two springs, the flows were studied here, and the conclusions were collected in a professorial lecture: if it rains, the water in the creek flows more smoothly, and if it doesn’t – more calmly! The tables compiled by the author show that what evaporates from the forest is a loss, what seeps in is difficult to count, so it can be ignored, and what flows down can be counted and used for modeling. The conclusion is that a dam needs to be built in my village!
Naturalists can’t compete with engineers, because they can (or they think they can) pick out a site for a huge dam, design it, count the amount of sand, cement and cranes needed, make demands, let in government priorities, calculate percentages and construct a budget with compensation for the displaced. And these are the concretes! And when something doesn’t work out, they blame it on landslides, co-ops, inflation.
Especially if the dam, which was supposed to be built in three years, is ceremonially put into operation after thirty years (as in Świnna Poręba) and cost so much that it cannot be counted. There is another problem in Wilkowice. The models did not predict that the ground in this particular place deviates from the statistical average for the area and the dam endangers the residents. But for that you need other, still specialized knowledge.
Foresters and naturalists have it harder, because in the forest the level of retention largely depends on the knowledge, slope, willingness, activity, sensitivity of the people involved. In addition, every terrain is different, so it is quite difficult to predict the effects in numbers and account for the project. When using simple and inexpensive technologies, it is harder to show success, harder to document one’s own achievements.
