Key message: The dataset includes data from forest soil surveys conducted in the period 2000–2020. It provides soil and site variables from 8269 locations. Data are aggregated in three basic soil layers: upper organic soil horizon (FH, 6875 locations), upper mineral layer 0–30 cm (M03, 8051 locations) and deeper mineral soil layer 30–80 cm (M38, 2260 locations). The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10608814, and access to the metadata is at https://metadata-afs.nancy.inra.fr/geonetwork/srv/fre/catalog.search#/metadata/38f24573-3c0d-469a-a66a-7060ce082155.

In 2023, branches of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) were placed on 24 different study sites within beech stands in the Czech Republic to study the distribution of the beech bark beetle (Taphrorychus bicolor Her.). After infestation, the branches were placed in emergence traps to capture adults of the offspring generation. In total, 2167 adults of T. bicolor were captured across the 24 study sites. The average capture (mean ± SE) was 90.3 ± 24.4 adults per site. Statistical analyses, including GLMM and GLM, were employed to assess the influence of elevation and stand age on the abundance of T. bicolor. The results indicate that the distribution of T. bicolor is mainly influenced by the elevation and age of the beech stand. The number of captured adults decreased with elevation and increased with stand age. Climatic region, volumes of beech, and volumes of felled beech wood from principal felling and thinning felling had no significant effect on the number of T. bicolor adults captured. We found that, overall, 73.37% of Czech beech stands (at elevations 300–650 m a.s.l.) are possibly threatened (either highly or slightly) by the large occurrence of T. bicolor, because they are present at elevations where T. bicolor is widespread. No outbreaks of T. bicolor have yet been reported in the Czech Republic, but with the increasing amount of beech planted, combined with global climate change, the possibility of outbreaks in the future cannot be excluded.

An?unprecedented bark beetle outbreak has led to?a?significant decline in?forest cover in?Central Europe in?the last 10 years, affecting an?area estimated at?more than 200 000 ha in?the Czech Republic. Among the many ecological threats a...

Presented monitoring in the Hrubý Jeseník Mountains is part of a research project focused on the impact of large-scale clear-cuts carried out during the extensive bark beetle outbreak in 2015–2020 on hydrological processes in small forest catchments. During the 2022–2024 growing seasons, precipitation, soil moisture, and soil water potential were monitored in clear-cuts and Norway spruce stands. Soil moisture was the highest at the beginning of vegetation season, then declined as the evapotranspiration increased. In open areas, significantly higher soil moisture was generally measured compared to Norway spruce stands due to their relatively high interception (29–69 %) and transpiration. However, the drought stress episodes with the strongly negative soil water potential (≈ -1.5 MPa) were identified rather exceptionally and exclusively in forest stands and in upper 10 cm of mineral soil. We conclude that the loss of forest cover, which temporarily occurred because of the bark beetle outbreak, does not have a fundamental impact on the development of soil moisture – at least there is no “drying out of the landscape”. The potential issue is rather the reduction in the retention capacity of soils to absorb larger amounts of torrential rainfall due to higher water reserves in the soil in clear-cut locations and reduced interception.

Base cations have declined within European forests due to leaching, accelerated by atmospheric acid deposition. This study aims at predicting the spatial distribution of pseudototal content of Ca, Mg, and K for coniferous, broadleaved and mixed forest stands. A harmonised database of about 7000 samples from the top mineral layer of 0–30 cm from the entire forest areas of the Czech Republic was used. A regression kriging model was used for spatial prediction of the content of the elements. The influence of the covariates used for the prediction was assessed using generalized additive models for location scale and shape (GAMLSS). The variance explained by the model was best for Ca with the R² of 0.32, the R² for Mg was 0.30, and the R² for K was 0.26. Model fitting assessed by the ratio of performance to inter-quartile distance (RPIQ) showed K as the best fit with a value of 1.12, followed by Mg with the value 0.87, and Ca with 0.25. Ca exhibited the best prediction fit for the GAMLSS, compared with K and Mg, based on their AIC matrix values. The predicted spatial distribution in this study provides information for policy and will provide information for the sustainable management of forests.