Downed in the Tatras

One of the most peculiar parts of traveling along the flank of the Tatra mountain range are large swathes of downed trees and other large clearings extending far down to the valley covered only with tree stumps half ripped out of the ground. According to the Educational Trail Strbske Pleso Guide, a wind calamity occurred in 2004 when more that 2.5 million cubic meters of wood where felled by wind gusts over 200 km/h or about 124 mph. Follow this event, a bark beetle infestation now effects more than 2.034 million trees on the State Forest Administration (TANAP) territory. I thought that this was particularly striking since our attache, Tina, said that most of the trees that we were looking at where planted. While the wind event could technically reference statements by the Fevered book on global warming as a contributing factor I think that in this case the bark beetle infestation may be more directly related as cold weather is one of the greater controlling factors in their population growth. The infestation could have weakened the trees as well. The following link has some really cool pictures showing the windstorms ferocity... http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=aae_1357077986. Also according to this article, it seems that windstorms may not be a new thing...http://www.researchgate.net/publication/249475593_A_tree-ring_reconstruction_of_wind_disturbances_in_a_forest_of_the_Slovakian_Tatra_Mountains_Western_Carpathians. Since damage was measured mostly in uprooted trees, it makes sense that it would only seem like recent damage occurred since the trees were not normally there. To relieve the dismal image of 8,737 hectares of trees being tossed around like straws, I included a happy Britta picture.