Analysis of the production potential of raw wood in the forests of Slovakia

Production of raw wood material and its regulation has a great ecological and economic importance in every country. The aim of the paper is to analyze the prospective production of raw wood with respect to the expected basic tree species composition and assortment structure on an example of long-term development of selected indicators of forest condition in Slovakia. For this analysis we used data on the area, growing stock and planned decennial timber felling in the forests of Slovakia in 1980, 1996 and 2003. The production potential of forests was evaluated on the basis of the annual perspective allowable cut by 2020, from which the prospective production of assortments was derived using the models of assortment yield tables of tree species. The results show that in the forests of Slovakia there is an about half proportion of coniferous and half proportion of broadleaved tree species, very good structure of growing stock as well as its trend in the last years. Production of raw wood assortments for industrial processing for the years 2010-2020 is limited by the volume 6.3-6.4 mil. m3. About one half of this volume comes from coniferous and the other half from broadleaved tree species. For coniferous tree species the proportion of spruce and fir is 87% and for broadleaved tree species the proportion of beech and oak is 80%. For coniferous tree species sawmill assortments have a decisive, almost 70% proportion. Regarding broadleaved tree species, pulpwood assortments with 47% proportion prevail, although with 11% the highest quality assortments for the production of veneer from beech and oak are also significant.