Jean de Montgolfier offers here an assessment of the impact on French forests of the storms of December 1999. He shows that, although the damage was terrible, it varied considerably depending on the types of soil, tree species, the diversity and the age of the trees – in short, the attention that had been paid beforehand to forest ecology.
The fact that some stands suffered major damage yet other trees close by suffered far less suggests that more careful management of the forests pays off. Let us hope, he writes, that the French will learn from the experience, as the Germans did twenty years earler.
Un nouveau départ pour la forêt
This article is published in Futuribles journal ,
