Damage to spruce stands in the Kysuce and Orava region determined from the National Forest Inventory

An analysis of the status of spruce stands in the Kysuce and Orava region was performed and their health condition was compared to the spruce forest constitution in the rest of Slovakia. For this purpose, the inventory plots established within the first circle of National Forest Inventory (NFI) in 2005 and 2006 were used. The Kysuce and Orava regions significantly differ from the rest of Slovak forests by its high proportion of spruce. The health status of the spruce stands in these regions, according to the salvage felling as a result of the damage caused prevailingly by stem rotting and bark beetles appears worse than in the rest of Slovakia. The analysis showed that not only the acute damage of spruce stands (insects) but also the chronic damage of trees (rotting, mechanical damage during logging) is more serious in these regions than in the rest of Slovakia. The browsing caused by deer game (data does not include young stands) in both regions as well as in the rest of Slovakia seems to be low and not so serious compared to the previously mentioned types of damage. Other sorts of damage (stem breakage, standing dead trees, or damage by insect) have also small proportion. More detailed analyses of NFI data with acceptable precision were possible only for most frequent kinds of damages such as stem rotting and damage by logging. The results showed the frequency of rotting tended to be higher with increasing stand age. Influence of altitude on the frequency of the damage was not evident. Since variability of selected types of damage on spruce forest in the target regions was high, all results are presented with the precision at 68% confidence interval. -1 .