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Description of solution
"Traditional land use (agriculture and forestry) is being abandoned in the Alps due to socioeconomic changes, while an increasingly larger area is being used for tourism and infrastructure, which requires protection from natural hazards.Forests provide permanent protective functions, but only if they are properly and sustainably managed. There has been a general decline in forest management in Europe and in the Alps in particular, where it is difficult to achieve positive economic returns.Climate change has increased the frequency of extraordinary weather phenomena, which causes higher risk from natural hazards and weakening of forest stability. In many Alpine countries, state subsidies are used to facilitate the management of forests with direct protective functions. In order to maximize protective effects with minimal costs, a thorough understanding of natural hazards, their impact areas, and the potential role of forests is necessary. A detailed delineation of forest areas with direct protective functions is necessary to determine the areas where state subsidies should be directed. In addition, forest profile models must be developed to inform silvicultural measures and to verify their success."
"The study area consists of 207 ha of protection forests in which regular cutting is restricted according to the 1993 Forest Act. Altitudes range from about 470 m a.s.l. (Sava Bohinjka River) up to 1200 m a.s.l. The slopes are very steep (mean slope angle of 35°) and include numerous cliff faces.""Debris flows are created by a sufficient quantity of torrential water, which collects due to the damming of surface water or, more frequently, due to strong local precipitation. The dominant association in this environment is Anemone trifoliae-Fagetum, which grows at 600-1200 m a.s.l. on predominantly steep slopes on all exposures. It is a zonal association of the Alpine phytogeographical area of the Illyrian floral province.European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) forests have a stable biocenotic structure. European beech populates the slopes of Soteska from the bottom to the edge of the plateau, occasionally transitioning to mixed silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) beech forest sites, which dominate the mountain plateau above Soteska.On steep slopes and on convex sites, Alpine beech forests transition to beech and European hop-hornbeam (Ostrya carpinifolia Scop.) or even to European hop-hornbeam and manna ash (Fraxinus ornus L.) forests. Data on past management indicates very low cutting intensities that did not exceed 1 m3 ha-1 year-1. Most of the recorded cutting involved sanitary cuts following windbreak. Forest chronicles and past forest management plans for the area indicate frequent windthrow events (1984, 1989, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2005, and 2009)."
"Numerous protection forests in the Alps have therefore been left unmanaged in recent decades; this is even more true for forests on massifs in southeastern Europe (Dinaric Alps, Carpathian Mountains). Protection forests undoubtedly need active management to sustain their protection role. To objectively delineate protection forests it is essential to define impact areas of all present natural hazards. This study uses modeling as an objective method for delineating protection forest with a debris flow hazard. "
The Soteska gorge is a narrow alpine valley along the Sava Bohinjka River (NW Slovenia) that drains the Bohinj Lake, and, together with the Sava Dolinka River, forms the Sava River (the largest and longest river in Slovenia).