Aftermath of ice storms

[sim0n]

I'm not a forester myself but this may be interesting to some you folk on here. I'm from Slovenia, we are supposedly the third most forest covered country in Europe (60% of the land is forests), only the Scandinavians have got us beat.

This winter in February we and some of our neighbors were hit very badly by ice storms. Certain towns and villages were without power for up to two weeks. Thankfully things are now back to normal other than a few very remote villages that are still running off diesel generators. Heres some photos from back then http://www.rtvslo.si/okolje/foto-zamrznjeni-prizori-slovenije-vkovane-v-led-in-sneg/329173

The damage to our forests is immense. About half a million hectares are affected. It's like someone carpet bombed all the trees. 7 million cubic meters of trees are damaged in some form or other. Thats almost twice the amount of wood loggers cut down here in a normal year. They've tried to train a couple of hundred new loggers and foresters (as a bonus helping the unemployment rate) but it's very dangerous felling and the damage won't be cleaned up fully for at least a decade.


Chainsaw are a humming all day every day whenever the weather is good. They need to get all the damaged pines out first to stop bark beetles from spreading.


I went on a hike a couple of weeks ago and took some photos of what it looks like with all the snow and ice thawed off.

[sprucebunny]

Thanks for the pictures. Are those beech trees ?
I'm sorry to hear of the massive damage but it should yield lots of firewood; probably more than people can use in time.

We had bad ice storm a few years ago with similar damage and lots of areas where the trees didn't hit the ground, they were just a huge snarl that you couldn't hope to walk thru. Also many larger trees with the tops just ruined.

I own a small lot that was hit hard and cut hard afterwards. It became infested with bindweed which ruined any saplings that were left.
It will take a long time for many of the forests here to recover.

[Ken]

Thanks for the pics sim0n.  Will most of the cleanup be done with chain saws or is there a lot of mechanical harvesting in Slovenia?  Looks terribly dangerous with a chain saw.  Also, is there enough industry in your country to use the extra volume?  I did some forest inventory work in the northeastern US about a decade ago in stands that looked like that.  Not much fun to walk through.

[thecfarm]

That almost makes me cry to see.

[SwampDonkey]

That sure is a mess there Sim0n, you folks have your work all lined up for quite some time. Hopefully, you can cut safely and inside a cabbed machine.  ;)

What species of hardwood are there in the damaged area.

[sim0n]

Heres a video of a drive through an devastated area just a week after it hit (only the road has been cleared)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOxN5rpyoUQ

That almost makes me cry to see.

Many old land owners did when they first went out to assess the damage and saw what happened to their lifetime of hard work :(

Thanks for the pictures. Are those beech trees ?
I'm sorry to hear of the massive damage but it should yield lots of firewood; probably more than people can use in time.

Yep, beech is very common, I believe a third of all our forests are beech.

Even if theres going to be a lot of firewood, it's at least twice as time consuming and twice as dangerous to get out compared to normally cutting down trees on a well kept lot. That said, prices for firewood have already dropped about 30% . I think prices for logs are stable for now but people are having a hard time selling them because storage yards are at full capacity.

What species of hardwood are there in the damaged area.

Our most common hardwood is beech as mentioned above, but theres a good amount of oak and ash as well. We're only about the size of Vermont so there isn't that much diversity  :D There may be some hornbeam, chestnut, maple and other stuff too.
Spruce is our most common softwood followed by silver fir and pine. Besides being less limby and straighter, they weren't affected as hard because they tend to grow in colder areas that only got snow with mainly lower areas getting hit by ice (its uncanny, above 700m or so and it's like nothing happened at all).

Thanks for the pics sim0n.  Will most of the cleanup be done with chain saws or is there a lot of mechanical harvesting in Slovenia?  Looks terribly dangerous with a chain saw.  Also, is there enough industry in your country to use the extra volume?  I did some forest inventory work in the northeastern US about a decade ago in stands that looked like that.  Not much fun to walk through.

We are a very hilly nation so most of the felling is still done with chainsaws.

Our wood industry was in shambles even without a natural disaster. Over the past two decades most of the sawmills and other wood processing factories have closed down   :-\ . A quarter of forests are state owned and the there is constant criticism that the concessions are too cheap and that we're giving away logs to Austria and Italy for practically nothing, then paying dearly to import back boards and furniture.