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Lots of tinder in the forest: foresters and farmers are concerned

2020-05-10T10:06:22.751Z


The very dry April is very worrying for foresters and farmers. Your forests would need a lot more rain.


The very dry April is very worrying for foresters and farmers. Your forests would need a lot more rain.

Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen - The generation of baby boomers once learned: "April does what it wants." The saying should make it clear that the weather this month is moody, alternating warm sun rays with sometimes heavy rainfall. But popular wisdom is overtaking. This April did nothing for a long time - except being dust-dry. And although the weather changed at the end of the month, it rained several times: meteorologists speak of the third driest April since the weather recording started. And quite a few experts fear the third year of drought in a row.

Hans Strobl senior is seriously concerned about the water, so much that he turns to our newspaper. He owns a small forest, and when he recently checked that he was right, he was able to pull the blackberry trees "like nothing out of the ground, the upper layer is so dry and loose". The next day the Münsinger helped an acquaintance in his forest. "We went there with a barrel of water and watered the young trees." Strobl is not only concerned about groundwater, but also about drinking water. "This is our most important food." Especially in times of corona, in which frequent hand washing is mandatory, people should be careful with the precious water. "If everyone just opened the tap to moisten and wash it off, but left it closed when soaping it thoroughly, that would be an important step," believes Strobl.

Robert Nörr has one of the most beautiful home offices you can imagine: the forest. Unfortunately, he is currently only allowed to enter it on his own; the tours of school classes that are usual in spring are canceled due to the Corona crisis. What Wolfratshausen's district forester discovered on his patrols in April: The upper, about 30 centimeters thick, "is bone dry". The long absence of precipitation and the persistent east wind in April, which dried up the soil like a hair dryer, are to blame. This is "a problem for the many young trees that the forest farmers would have planted on the damaged areas, because they are not deeply rooted," explains Nörr.

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Further down, after the relatively heavy rainfall in February, the soil is "still well moistened, the old trees benefit from it" - still. If it continues to rain little over the course of the year, "we will of course also have problems there". For example with the bark beetle, which finds an easy victim in spruce trees suffering from water stress. After all, not in a long-term comparison, but in contrast to previous years, the first generation of the pest did not swarm out so early this year.

Compared to northeastern Bavaria, "where it looks catastrophic again", the situation in the Oberland is still good, according to Nörr. “In Lower Franconia, the rainfall from home is less and the soils are much more permeable to water. We are privileged due to the northern congestion in the Alps, and in our soils there are thick loam packages that store water well down to the Munich gravel level. ”

At the end of April, grassland, the dominant agricultural use in the Oberland, "didn't look as bad" as on the arable land, "it was just dusting there," says Peter Fichtner. How the situation in the forest is developing, said Bad Heilbrunner, "we all don't know yet". The problem of forest affects almost all farmers in the district, "because there is hardly a farmer here who has no wood". As district chairman of the Bavarian Farmers' Association (BBV), Fichtner is currently traveling a lot in the country. What he saw: "The winter cereals in the fields are looking good, some of the summer cereals have just been sown." That is why none of these colleagues will have acute problems.

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At the Geretsrieder Stadtwerke you practice calmly. The groundwater level of 598.40 meters above sea level at the end of April did not worry anyone, says Thomas Loibl, city spokesman. The value was only 20 centimeters below that in April of the previous year. And there was still air at the historic low of 597.48 meters above sea level, which was measured in October 2018. Loibl: "With a rainy event, things can immediately look different again, so everything is still in order."

In view of the current consumption volume, which has increased in some places due to the initial restrictions to contain the corona pandemic, the water requirement in Geretsried has not changed significantly. However, consumption shifted somewhat during the day, says Loibl. The amount of water that usually rushes through the taps around 6 / 6.30 a.m. is currently recorded by the municipal utility company two hours later, i.e. around 8 / 8.30 a.m. Will the Geretsrieder get up later because of Corona? Loibl does not want to "speculate" about this.

Peter Fichtner does not want to speculate whether another sad drought record will be broken this year. “If I knew it,” jokes the BBV screech chief, “I would play the lottery tomorrow and buy a tanker full of oil the day after tomorrow, because you can even get money for that right now.”

peb / sw

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2020-05-10

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