Systemic forestry in the Crimean Pine, Balkan Fir and Balkan Beech forests of Germenj-Shelegur, South-eastern Albania

The Germenj-Shelegur area, located near the Greek border of south-eastern Albania, covers a surface area of approximately 30,000 ha, 15,000 of which are made up of for-ests and 15,000 of upland meadow, mainly primary, and agricultural fields. A group of government-nominated experts has rightly regarded it as meriting protection, and has proposed that it be classified as a national park. The motivation for this proposal lies, in general terms, in the high levels of diversity found in the biotic component of the sys-tems present, and, in particular, in the role played by forests in protecting the water re-gime and soil, in the value of the landscape, which is decidedly alpine in nature, and in the production of a variety of woods, some of which are precious. The forests are all of natural origin, and at lower altitudes are mainly made up of Crimean Pine, while higher altitudes, where the Pine is also present, also contain Balkan Fir and Balkan Beech. Their specific composition, in terms of the layers present, is quite unique. This fact led us to design the study that would delineate the systemic forestry interventions with the aim, as is known, of increasing the functional efficiency of the ecosystems af-fected. To make this objective more appropriate to the specificity of the forests in this study, the authors felt it was right to precede the part of this work dedicated to forestry interventions with an outline of the vegetation within these forests and a definition of the key compositional and structural features which characterise them.