From forest to forest or where is the bare rocky Karst?

Abstract

The natural vegetation on the Kras (Karst) Plateau is forest. Anthropogenic pressure on this region has been present since the prehistoric times. Because of deforestation linked to excessive grazing and other land uses, and hence accelerated water and wind erosion, the region has over the last millennium gradually turned into bare karst landscape. In the 18th and 19th century, the Kras (Karst) Plateau was a »rocky desert«. In the 19th century, systematic reforestation began, first unsuccessfully with oak and afterwards successfully with black pine. This process took place also in the first half of the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century, reforestation was replaced by the process of spontaneous afforestation as a result of natural overgrowing of abandoned agricultural land.