What is happening in Latvia with even-aged spruce stands, oaks and beeches? What actual timber increment does forest monitoring show? And what becomes of the sparkle in a scientist's eyes after eighteen different audits? A conversation with Jurģis Jansons, Director of the Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”, about the institute's work over the past year.
How have Latvia’s forest scientists navigated this turbulent election year?
Stably and with progress. We have continued our work with the sense that we are the theoretical support for the national forestry sector. The fields in which we strive to maintain national competence and generate new knowledge were already formulated in the institute's strategy around 2008. All knowledge gained through our activities is available to the forestry sector.
The furthest projected activity in the forest breeding programme is currently planned for around 2064. It is one of the longest-term scientific planning documents in Latvia. Closely linked to forest breeding is the work of forest scientists in mitigating the impact of various climate risks and increasing carbon sequestration. Through our knowledge, we strive to prove what is seemingly obvious: it is not reserves and prohibitions, but forestry and growing trees that promote carbon sequestration and reduce the negative impact of climate change on the world. Often, proving common knowledge requires serious work, especially to formulate it in scientific literature and use it in references for forestry and climate policy.
We are continuing a serious research programme on the interaction between forestry and the environment. This year, for the first time during Forest Science Day, we introduced stakeholders from the forestry sector to the Zalvīte research site in person. In the catchment area of this nearly 100% forested stream, we are assessing the impact of forestry on various environmental parameters with the help of at least 100 different measurements and devices.
We are continuing research into how to better measure trees and how to more accurately forecast their growth. The calculation of the capital value of the forest, the importance of which will only increase in the future, will depend directly on our ability to forecast the growth of forest trees accurately and reliably.
This year, we plan to complete a study on the role and place of the western capercaillie in forestry. In fact, we see what has been achieved as the first stage of a long-term project. It is somewhat pleasing that the capercaillie is the first forest bird species that has moved from the perspective of business-oriented non-governmental organisations into the framework of forest science. The capercaillies we are studying are equipped with telemetry equipment to understand their behaviour in the presence of humans. Does the capercaillie really flee in a panic when it senses a human and therefore go extinct? Perhaps it is the other way around? Perhaps these relationships are sufficiently neutral.
On Forest Science Day, we presented current research on the stabilising role of broadleaved forests in long-term forestry. The participants of Forest Science Day were of the unanimous opinion that Latvia should strive not only to preserve broadleaved forests but to grow them – to increase their area and significance. All signs indicate that oaks thrive in Latvia. People who plant oaks or observe their good growth in their forests ask: why do we not have oak breeding, no seedlings, no technology for growing them? We have come to the forestry sector with an initiative to create a programme for the development of oak forests.
But what if beeches grow faster?
The beech is, after all, an alien species. However, it is regenerating and spreading further in Latvia on its own, which in turn means that it has adapted to Latvian conditions and can be considered semi-natural. I do not think that oaks should be replaced by beeches in Latvia and say – no more oaks. Scientists have observed that oaks are currently regenerating intensively – for example, woodland groves are full of little oaks. However, we do not really know what will happen to them in the future.
Driving from Smārde to Tukums, before Milzkalne on the right side, we can see how one creative forester tried to tend to a sparse pine forest, which had been selectively logged and had become overgrown with hazel and other shrubs, by leaving the maples. In autumn, when the maples turn colour, it looks beautiful. A pine forest with maples… In the same way, oaks are also entering the forests. Perhaps the view that maples and oaks do not belong in a grove is too simplistic? This requires experience, which comes with observations and measurements.
What should be done with overly dense spruce stands?
We have completed the intended state research programme on even-aged spruce forests. Most likely, in modern-day Latvia, politicians are not yet ready for legislative amendments – to abolish felling regulations for planted spruce and leave the choice to the owner, depending on whether the stand is growing or collapsing. Because in 2017, it was not possible to pass much simpler regulatory amendments.
By re-measuring hundreds of stands, we found that the proportion of non-viable even-aged spruce stands has increased significantly over the last 12 years. We consider an even-aged spruce stand to be non-viable if the thickest trees in the stand (the main stand) are growing at the same rate as the thinner ones (the intermediate stand) or even worse. These are 40–50-year-old stands that were planted too densely back in Soviet times. In another theme of the state research programme, we have found a positive reaction of remaining trees after thinning, but on the condition that there is no wind or snow impact, which unfortunately no one can guarantee.
In Latvia, the example of Germany and Poland is still alive, where even now people deliberately create very dense young stands. From time to time, some casual observer brings these examples back from there as "good news". However, Germany and Poland do not have developed forest breeding, and they also have low-quality local tree populations. These are completely different principles of forestry; natural selection takes place in the forest. Often, forestry for them is at a hobby level; people there earn money from other things.
Forest scientist Kaspars Bušs once said in discussions about how to fulfil the USSR requirement to plant dense young stands, so that the tree canopies would close faster and the area could be reclassified as forest: you can plant dense young stands, just do not forget to go the next day and pull out every second seedling! Today we know that we should have pulled them out even more diligently. We have evaluated spruce stands that have grown from young stands with extremely low initial density – with 400 trees per hectare. And there is nothing wrong with the stands; the timber fully meets the needs of building construction, while good or bad branching is an inherited trait. This year, the annual conference “Science and Practice for the Development of the Forestry Sector”, which we organised in cooperation with LLU, held an off-site seminar in such a stand.
If we want to grow technological wood, we can also plant dense young stands. But if we want to obtain logs as the final forestry product, a different model must be used. Planting even-aged spruce stands is a rational and supported way of regenerating forest stands, but the approach must be completely different from what it was half a century ago.
Are inspectors frequent guests of yours?
This year, we have endured at least 18 organised audits. When the then Minister of Agriculture, Laimdota Straujuma, came to visit us, she noted as an important observation: your people, when talking about their work, have such joy and a sparkle in their eyes! But what happens to this sparkle when 18 audits come, none of which (none!) asks: what have you, as scientists, done, what have you learned and given to the sector, and what and how could the state help scientists? Instead, they are constantly looking for faults. They cannot find anything real, because there are no faults, but the sparkle in our eyes and the joy of work were "taken out of us" almost entirely. So that is how it goes for us… The auditors, who spend millions, do not evaluate what people are doing based on substance. Some higher-level auditors provoke the lower-level ones, and they all become angrier and more unconstructive by the moment. Now, as I talk to you, we are awaiting our nineteenth audit…
But there are many people in Latvia who think that audits really do a lot of good. Unfortunately, I did not find in the proposal of any political force the idea of reducing the burden of audits and distrust, which causes people in the public sector – from a small clerk to the head of a large institution – to be afraid to make decisions and drive processes forward. Therefore, a great many people would much rather choose to do nothing. But can development be promoted with eternal fear and inaction?
Do you cooperate with the Faculty of Forestry?
There are big changes happening at the LLU Faculty of Forestry. For now, we feel them at the management level, by serving on the Faculty of Forestry Advisory Board. The main thing is that we see the will to raise the intellectual level of students, placing it at the centre of the university's activities as the main priority. And it is possible to do this by cooperating and offering the student everything available in the Latvian intellectual space. But now, working as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Forestry, I myself better understand the burden of pedagogical work. It is one thing to prepare and go to deliver one or two guest lectures to students, but quite another if you have to fill lecture time once a week for three months in a row, as the poet Ziedonis wrote, "to be filled with something". For scientists, this undoubtedly requires additional resources, because their main job is different.
What data does forest monitoring show?
The third cycle, or five-year period, of forest monitoring will soon end. Monitoring information is very dynamic and therefore available to everyone on the institute's website. It changes every year, and this mass of numbers needs to be understood and one must know how to navigate it. Especially when comparing the annual felling volume and timber increment.
Yes, we have a tree increment in the forest of 25–26 million m3 including bark, stumps, and tops. Sometimes it seems optimistic to compare this volume with the 12 million cubic metres that are supposedly felled each year. But it must be remembered that the felled volume is calculated without bark, stumps, and tops, and in the private sector, this accounting is quite voluntary and therefore all the more inaccurate. It should not be forgotten that at least 6 million m3 of trees die each year without the presence of an axe or a saw.
This means that the actual annual increment of forest timber resources in Latvia is, in fact, about three million m3 of timber, not, for example, 15 million, as might seem to a casual observer.
If we grow young stands correctly, the rate of increment will increase significantly in the coming decades, because a completely different forestry system has been used since the second half of the nineties. But at that moment, if those three million are perhaps not there and the actual stock difference goes into the negative, we will have to prove that the accumulation will happen in the future. If we now say that we are not felling more than is growing, at some point this may change, and go into the positive after a longer time. In state forests, such a moment should not arrive in the foreseeable future, but if private forest owners fell more, the situation in the country as a whole may be different. That is why scientifically based forecasts and monitoring are of increasing importance.
On the other hand, there are still large areas of overmature forest stands in Latvia. It is true that the intensity of forestry in Latvia is increasing, but the areas of old, overmature forests are also increasing.
Publication produced in cooperation with the Forest Development Fund. Photo by Valdis Semjonovs