District - While the big politicians have been arguing for many years about whether there is any climate change at all (and if so, whether it is really man-made), the employees of Bavarian forest administrations have preferred to trust the incorruptible data that they largely have for just as long measure and evaluate yourself.
Incidentally, this began a good 30 years ago and so-called forest climate stations were set up, which regularly and sometimes at very short intervals provide data on temperatures, precipitation, pollutant and nutrient inputs from the air, the condition of the soil, ingredients of the soil solutions, pollutant discharge under the root space of trees, the condition of the crown, the time of budding, the nutritional condition of the trees or the ground vegetation.
There are 19 such technically upgraded intensive measuring points across Bavaria.
One of them is also located in the Ebersberger Forest.
A forest climate station always consists of two components: In an outdoor measuring point, primarily meteorological data is recorded or pollutants are measured that are carried into the forest via precipitation or as dust.
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A modern outdoor measuring point in the middle of the forest north of St. Hubertus: At this clearing surrounded by forest, meteorological parameters such as temperatures, precipitation or pollutant inputs are recorded.
© Stefan Rossmann
Measurements are made on hidden areas
An existing measuring point works a little differently.
As in the Ebersberger Forest, this is a hidden, easily impossible to find and, on top of that, fenced area, in which full-time and voluntary employees regularly take samples, determine and forward measurement data.
In this area, however, there are also countless sensors in the ground.
Here in the Ebersberg Forest, the Bavarian State Institute for Forests and Forestry (LWF) has been observing environmental influences and their effects on the forest since the 1990s.
These environmental monitoring efforts arose in Bavaria's forests during the time of major forest damage events, as Klaas Wellhausen reports.
He is Head of Forests in the Department of Food, Agriculture and Forestry (AELF) for Ebersberg and Erding.
Forest climate stations: Integrated into an international observation network
Overall, the Bavarian forest climate stations are integrated into an international data monitoring network spread across Europe.
The data from the Ebersberg Forest is either manually / analog, but in many cases it has long been via the appropriate digital, electronic route initially to Freising - in order to be forwarded or evaluated there.
Representatives of Franconian and southern Bavarian forest facilities met these days for a one-day annual service meeting.
A theoretical part with specialist lectures, to which numerous colleagues from northern Bavaria had joined in, was followed by an excursion after lunch in the Anzinger "Forsthof", during which the 20 forest experts were given an insight into the structure and functionality of the forest climate station in the Ebersberg Forest in particular.
Of course, we were particularly interested in the answers to the question of which data was measured, collected and how it was evaluated here in the Munich gravel plain and especially in the immediate vicinity of the Munich metropolitan area;
and what conclusions can be drawn from it.
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Head of the tour Hans-Peter Dietrich with Heinz Utschig and Klaas Wellhausen.
© Stefan Rossmann
Climate change: The measurement data are clear
Much of this data is, according to the message to the external foresters, fairly clear: For example, that the summer temperatures at all measuring locations, including in the forest, have risen by over two degrees in the last 70 years, but particularly sharply since 1990. For them Local forest management means such an objectively existing average warming that you are dealing with an ecological chain reaction: longer vegetation times, higher water consumption, higher total evaporation, higher susceptibility, especially with the spruce (so-called drought stress) and, last but not least, an increase in the bark beetle problem.
For foresters who act responsibly, this naturally results in a need for action.
Wellhausen sums it up like this: Away from pine and spruce, into mixed cultures with deciduous trees, including beeches.
A process that was initiated in the Ebersberg Forest a long time ago, as the responsible forest manager Heinz Utschig was able to document to his Bavarian colleague in the form of a forest conversion strategy developed by him and his Wasserburger employees.
