Explore the scholarly record.

Abstract

The Vjosa River basin contains one of Europe’s last large free-flowing river systems, but its surrounding forests have been altered by severe historic management including long-term grazing, wood extraction, fire, and intensive management. We assessed the forest conditions and restoration priorities in the Vjosa river basin by integrating environmental mapping, potential natural vegetation, Copernicus land-cover data, historical management information and field data obtained from established reference plots covering typical forest vegetation types. Our results show that the basin covers 4536.4 km² and ranges in elevation from see level to elevations up to 2477 m. Forest area decreased from 110,305 ha in 2000 to 99,835 ha in 2020, a net decline of 9%; broadleaved forest decreased by 13%, while mixed forest increased from a small baseline. Field surveys identified (i) Mediterranean shrublands, (ii) thermophilus oak forests, (iii) planted pine stands, (iv) montane forests and (v) riparian forests as the principal forest vegetation and management units. Degraded regeneration, browsing, repeated cutting, fire damage, strongly affected the forest areas. Our findings show that river conservation must be complemented by catchment-scale forest and pasture management. Priority actions are grazing regulation, assisted natural regeneration, density management in pine plantations, pathogen-informed riparian restoration, protection of erosion-prone slopes and a permanent reference-plot network. As a next step a full environmental inventory of the Vjosa region is suggested to ensure the protection and sustainable management in one of the last Mediterranean free-floating river basins.