The role of forests in controlling land degradation through erosion in Romania

摘要

In the last decades, mankind has been faced with land degradation caused by improper exploitation in the historical past. On a global scale, the forest area decreased to about 30% of the land area in the last two centuries [1]. The reductions of forest areas occurred mainly in densely populated areas, for farmland and settlements expansion, but also in less populated regions of the world. Overall, the forest area reduction from anthropogenic causes recorded a rate of 9 million ha/year during the last decades [2] [3]. Such changes in forest structure also occurred in Romania and have led to the accelaration of geomorphological and hydrological processes and have increased the areas degraded by erosion. This paper presents the current situation of forests in Romania, the regressive dynamic as an acceleration factor of the degradation processes in the last two decades and rehabilitation measures of degraded lands through afforestation. Statistical data of the last two decades provided by INSSE - National Institute for Statistics were processed and interpreted in this paper [4].