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There are not many sites in densely populated temperate Europe where primary forest succession has a chance to run without direct human intervention for a long time and over a relatively large area. The extensive drift sand area of the Veluwe, central Netherlands, provided an opportunity to study succession in a formerly open and dynamic inland sand dune system combining chronosequence and permanent plot approaches. Different successional stages, aged up to 205 years since the first tree individuals established, were identified and vegetation studied using 1200 permanent plots established in 1988 in three adjacent sand dune complexes of different successional age, and resampled during the past three decades. After two centuries, forest succession has proceeded to a pine forest with gradually increasing participation of native deciduous trees. However, their expansion has been arrested by browsing of wild ungulates. Species diversity peaked after about 40 years of forest succession, then declined, and increased again after 100 years. During the past three decades, the herb layer has differentiated in the oldest plots, and the spontaneous forest succession is still in progress. Besides open drift sand with early successional stages, also the spontaneously established late successional forests are valuable from the conservation point of view.

This study aims to analyze how changes in land use influenced the delivery of ecosystem services in Cezava, a South Moravian agricultural region in the Czech Republic, in the period of 1845-2010. An observation of this period covering more than 160 years made it possible to reflect on social forces driving processes of transformation in the country. To capture the landscape multifunctionality and to indicate the environmental quality of the area under study, seven services provided in parallel by arable land, forests, and bodies of water were studied. The quantification of ecosystem services is based primarily on the transfer of values from the existing literature and on chronicle reviews and map analysis. Because looking back to the more distant past is a challenge and reliable information resources are lacking, a simple scoring method defining the functional features of the ecosystems was applied in order to evaluate the change of qualitative characteristics of the observed ecosystems. Besides that, the findings of these integrated assessments were supported by an analysis performed using landscape metrics. A comparison of service provision over the decades revealed that regulating and cultural services were significantly reduced, while provisioning services increased due to the proliferation of arable land, land consolidation, and agricultural intensification. However, a trend of improvement in the delivery of ecosystem services was introduced after 1990. Despite several uncertainties, this study demonstrates that it is possible to analyze long-term land-use trends to generate more meaningful, spatially explicit information, which can form the basis for landscape planning and ecosystem management.

In Central Europe, mountain areas still remain valuable islands of nature and biological diversity in spite of their long-continued use by man. That is why some of them were declared national parks and/or landscape protected areas. In most parks, forests cover more than 80 % of their area, which explains the importance of a well-considered protection and protective management of these forests. Such management is highly demanding in terms of conceptual decision-making, development of scientific information and qualifications of national parksmanagement teams. Moreover, research and monitoring should be components of national park's activities. Similar to commercial forests, forests in national parks have been affected by disturbances - both natural (windstorms, insect plagues) and caused by man (e.g. industrial emissions). Often, they are combinations of both and affect/enhance each other. As a result, the conversion from commercial to protective management is a problematic task for all authorities involved. Ongoing climatic instability with unexpected extreme fluctuations makes the matter still more complicated and further emphasises the need for a well-founded conceptual approach to the management of these forests: protective management leading to development of self-sustaining forest ecosystems.In this review, special attention is paid to the successful restoration of mountain forests in the Krkonose National Park, Czech Republic, heavily disturbed by acid deposition in the 1980s.

Forests in the Czech Krkonoše Mts have a long history wherein people played a very important role. The first traces of human presence in the mountains date from the 7th century. At that time, Slavic colonists settled in the valleys at the foot of the mountains, discovered and mined iron ore on the high southern slope of Černá hora Mt. The second half of the 16th century was a very important period. Within several decades, all accessible forests of the central and eastern parts of the range had been cleared, the wood brought to streams and floated along the Labe River to Central Bohemia, to be used in the silver mines in Kutná Hora. The woodcutters of that time were German speaking colonists from the Austrian Alps. It was them who invented and used the German name for the mountains - „das Riesengebirge\" (not „Giant Mts.\", but „Skidding Mts.\" - the term derived from the skidding of wood blocks on sledges to water reservoirs to be floated further). It was also them who created the very specific landscape settlement structure of the area after the finishing of forest clearings. To survive, they practised the so called „Baudenwirtschaft\", a very extensive agriculture practice on cleared slopes, while less accessible areas were left to nature and forest development. Organized forestry introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries profited from the cold climate of the slowly ending Little Ice Age. This period was favourable for Norway spruce, which dominated the Krkonoše Mts forests until recently. The Krkonoše Mts National Park was established in 1963, to protect the extraordinary rich nature of the highest Czech mountains. But within the first 30 years of its existence, the National Park was confronted with a really fatal experience of excessive acid deposition. 8.000 ha (25 %) of its forests died completely, while the rest was damaged. Due to this, the National Park was put on the list of the ten most endangered national parks of the world! The essential help came from abroad. The Dutch Foundation FACE (Forests Absorbing Carbon dioxyde Emissions) offered a large amount of money to restore the forests in the National Park. Scientists from the University of Amsterdam and Wageningen University designed a restoration strategy based on a wellconsidered combination of natural regeneration processes and active forest management.Within ten years, National Park Krkonoše could be removed from the list of endangered national parks. Today's appeal for forest protection and management is due to climate change. It is a serious invitation to local foresters to do their best in the ongoing restoration of the mountain forests, to change their species compositioin , structure and biological diversity, and to strengthen their natural status. Scientific research on natural processes and forest development will play a role in this matter. A well considered research program is desirable and advisable to master this appeal. The future of the Krkonoše Mts forests is in the hands of their foresters of today.

Despite extensive forest destruction in the Middle Ages and later intensive commercial forest management, remnants of virgin forests remained spared in some Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European countries. These virgin forests are the last examples of original forests in this part of Europe. That is why their protection becomes an important issue of current European forestry and nature protection policy. But the knowledge about the location and the area of virgin forests in these countries is incomplete up till now. This article has the prime goal to present a conceptual framework what virgin forests might be (“A conceptual framework for defining of virgin forests” section). Based on this framework, a working methodology has been tested in Bulgaria and Romania (“Results of the two national projects in Romania and in Bulgaria” section and further). For this reason two projects have been carried out by the Royal Dutch Society of Nature Conservation (KNNV) in close co-operation with the Forestry Institutes in Romania and in Bulgaria. The results of these projects are described in general terms and further analysis in the future is necessary to describe specific features like forest structure and spatial heterogeneity of these forests. Based on the results of the inventory, principles of sustainable protection and management of the mapped virgin forests were defined and described in the research reports. The usefulness of the inventory became evident already during the EU pre-accession period of both countries while preparing the NATURA 2000 network. The remaining virgin forests of temperate Europe are an inexhaustible source of ecological information about biodiversity, structure, natural processes and overall functioning of undisturbed forest ecosystems. Their research will reveal information which can be used for ecological restoration of man-made forests which are degraded through intensive forestry practices over the last centuries. The last virgin forests of temperate Europe represent an irreplaceable part of the natural capital of Europe and are worth to be protected by law. Their last remnants in South-Eastern and Eastern Europe are endangered by commercial activities. A full inventory of remaining virgin forests in all countries of temperate Europe is a matter of highest urgency. A representative selection of virgin forest sites should be declared by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites.

The identity of man-made landscapes is based on the balance among their ecological, cultural, and economic dimensions. Since the 1950s, short-term economic benefits have globally often outweighed long-term interests. This results in decreased landscape quality manifested as increased erosion of agricultural land, decreased water retention capacity, increased landscape uniformity, and loss of biodiversity. A new phenomenon influencing the condition of man-made landscapes is climate change. Extreme fluctuations of temperature and precipitation have been causing repeated floods and also periods of drought in Europe. Landscapes damaged by inappropriate management are unable to offset these impacts. It is necessary to stop this development by changing land use and management methods to restore the balance among landscape functions. For the Czech Republic, we propose to develop a long-term landscape vision and to formulate a responsible landscape policy with regional strategic goals, including subsidies and penalties (carrots and sticks), based on the principles of the European Landscape Convention. To promote ecological stability, we recommend allocating funds from the Common Agricultural Policy to both the restoration and maintenance of valuable habitats. Landscape research and management (based on habitat/species monitoring in cooperation with stakeholders) must be strengthened in order to play a proper role in the transformation. It is time for clear communication with the public and the training of state officials and land users in spatial and landscape planning. To fill this gap in interdisciplinary cooperation, we call for the establishment of a platform on sustainable landscape management in the Czech Republic.

Questions: (a) What are the rates and directions of vegetation succession in an inland sand-dune system? (b) What are the differences in successional trajectories in different relief types? and (c) Is it possible to preserve the last areas of still active dunes and under what circumstances? Location: The study sites were located in the northern part of the Veluwe Region, central Netherlands; longitude 5 degrees 44' E, latitude 52 degrees 20' N, altitude 9 to 24 m a.s.l. Methods: Vegetation and relief mapping was conducted in three permanent plots, 200 m × 200 m in size, in 1988 and 2003. Phytosociological relevés (2400) were recorded in each 10 m × 10 m subplots. Age of woody species was determined by wood coring. Geographic Information System, ordination analyses, and TWINSPAN were used for data exploration and elaboration. Results: A total of 70 vascular plants and 19 bryophytes were recorded over successional stages spanning approximately190 years. The following dominant species formed the sequence of successional stages, but not all participated in all relief types: Ammophila arenaria, Festuca arenaria, Corynephorus canescens, Festuca ovina and Agrostis capillaris, and pine forest dominated in its herb layer at first by Deschampsia flexuosa and later by either Empetrum nigrum, Vaccinium myrtillus or Vaccinium vitis-idaea. Conclusions: The successional trajectory is basically unidirectional for more than 100 years; no clear multiple successional pathways were observed, as is frequent in coastal dunes. Successional divergence was observed after approximately 130 years in the composition of the herb layer in the closed pine forest. The obvious vegetation heterogeneity in the still active sand-blown area is related to differences in timing of vegetation establishment on particular relief types, thus the succession exhibits a terrain-dependent asynchronous character. We conclude that the last patches of still-active sand dunes can be preserved only by repeated strong artificial disturbances.