BULETINUL INSTITUTULUI POLITEHNIC DIN IAŞI

Publicat de
Universitatea Tehnică „Gheorghe Asachi” din Iaşi
Volumul 64 (68), Numărul 1, 2018
Secţia
HIDROTEHNICĂ

STUDY OF ECOLOGICAL INTERACTIONS IN THE FOREST

ENVIRONMENT
BY

ALINA AGAFIŢEI* and VICTOR GABOR

“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iaşi,

Faculty of Hydrotechnics, Geodesy and Environmental Engineering

Received: January 20, 2018

Accepted for publication: February 28, 2018

Abstract. This paper treats the problem of interactions in the forest

environment and their effects. The composition, structure and functions of the
forest at one point are conditioned by changes in the environmental context
over time, but its internal environment, its protective function is determined
precisely by the structure and state of the forest at each stage of its evolution.
Forest vegetation has a high capacity to oppose random variations of
environmental factors, even when they exceed the boundaries of their tolerance
zone.
Keywords: environment; forest; ecosystems; vegetation; climate changes.

1. Introduction

From an ecological perspective, living organisms are constituted in

populations that interact with each other, conditioning each other's existence,
state and functionality, but are in the same complex interactions with the a-
biotic environment in the space occupied by the living community (biocenosis).
At the same time, the forest system formed - the forest as a whole -
influences and it is influenced by other neighboring ecosystems, integrated at a
higher level - forest biomes (extensive forests of different types, covering a
*
Corresponding author: e-mail: [email protected]
36 Alina Agafiţei and Victor Gabor

landscape). Over these complex interactions in which the forest is engaged

overlap with the social-human environment, consisting predominantly of the
forest-technical actions, but also of other antrophic factors, which derive from
other human actions and is redistributed above the forest, conditioning its
existence, the condition, its functionality.
The specific environment of the forest, resulting from complex
interactions between living organisms as biochemical and biochemical factors
and the abiogenic environment or the forest resort (biotope - habitat), including
the cosmic, geographic, orographic, edaphic, hydrological, geochemical
environment) has the character of a global ecological result - which configures
the conjuncture environment (soil, climate, etc.) specific to the forest at one
point.
The resulting forest environment is of a conjectural nature because
many ecological factors vary in their random concentration and, due to the
complex interaction between them, changing the concentration of one alone
leads to the change of all and the resultant - the forest environment.
Initial, the character of the environment is dominated by the abiogenic
environments – litho-logy, orography, soil, climate of the site or biotope, but
after the forest closes and the stabilization of its biocenosis, its environment is
predominantly determined by biochemical and biochemical factors.
So, anthropogenic factors - which act directly on the forest (forests
measures, sports hunting and poaching, grazing domestic animals) and
indirectly (chemical pollutants from agriculture, industries, transport,
radioactive isotopes and their energies) can strongly disturb the forest
environment due to interactions complex with both the living world and
inorganic environments.
Permanent exchanges of substance, energy and information between
living components and between them and the abiogenic environment, which
have extremely intense and directs over the long existence of the forest, have
allowed for the establishment of a biochemical balance (balanced numerical
ratios among populations) of an ecological balance (between them and their
surrounding environment).
In a complex and diversified structured forest, these fluctuations do not
affect the integrity and apparent stability, the almost continuously interrupted
equilibrium is quickly restored not to its predecessor parameters, but to another
level, often higher, thanks to feed-back circuits.
In the relationships between forest-living animals (plant and animal
species) represented by populations with a variable population, with a
generation structure and age that changes over time and factors of their external
environment, each ecological factor has a specific action, even when has the
same strength.
There is an optimal level of concentration of all ecological factors at
which each species reaches its maximum diversification and development, a
level that is not usually achieved, the coincidence of the optimum concentration
of all ecological factors with a low probability.
 Bul. Inst. Polit. Iaşi, Vol. 64 (68), Nr. 1, 2018 37

2. Experimental

In the existence of the forest, in its evolution, the relationships between

the abiotic factors and the vegetation are decisive; consequently, their
knowledge, the general and the particular aspects are of particular importance,
both for the correct execution of the forests measures and for the design of a
new forest or for the ecological reconstruction of the destroyed ones.
The existence of different plant species, their flocks, the degree of
individual development, the structure of the plant populations depend on the
whole abiotic factors and not on the concentration and the action of each of
them, as well as on their variation regime over time, namely the succession of
the ecological conjunctions static - for long periods of time, yearly, seasonally,
monthly.
On the other hand, phenology, typology and phenomenology of forest
vegetation are expressions of adaptation of plants not to the variations of each
ecological factor, but to these ecological conjunctions that have succeeded over
time.
So, when analyzing a resort for forests purposes, it must be described in
terms of all ecological factors and the interaction between them, with their
entire variation regime (in the past, today, predictable).
At the same time, vegetation is analyzed and if a certain degradation
state (more or less advanced) is found, then a static cause should not be sought,
but a set of causes that led, through interaction, to this result and more rarely the
factor minimal that caused the collapse, exclusion of a species or more species,
even when the other factors were if not optimal, at least tolerable.
Forest vegetation has a high capacity to oppose random variations of
environmental factors, even when they exceed the boundaries of their tolerance
zone, if these variations are often repeated in the existence of the forest, each
time having similar intensities, meanings and durations.
On the other hand, the abiogenic environment of the resort with a
certain geographical position, altitude, relief, soil, etc., is strongly modified by
the vegetation of the forest, its structure, the nature and development of the
forest, but also the other levels in which in essence, the climate is changed.
Consequently, we can speak, taking on the ecological factors, their
specific influence on the plants, the animals, the life of the forest, but also the
influence of the life of forests, animals, plants on the abiotic ecological factors.

3. Results and Discussions

Regarding the interactions between climate and the forest life,

vegetation receives and modifies all the climate factors (heat, light, humidity,
wind), resulting in a particular climate - forest fito-climate, differentiated as a
microclimate from the one above or around the forest.
This, in turn, changes the soil climate and influences the life, not only
of the plants themselves, but also of the animals.
In the interaction between light and heat, the solar radiant energy,
38 Alina Agafiţei and Victor Gabor

composed of light and heat radiation, emitted as a constant (1.98 cal / cm2 /
min) is retained in a proportion of approx. 53% of the earth's atmosphere by
retreating and retaining, with only 47% reaching the ground when it is
discovered or at the surface of the forest's crown.
The upper part of the forest canopy behaves like a screen in the way of
cosmic radiation, in general, and solar radiation, in particular.
Thus, it reflects in the atmosphere about. 20-25% of this radiation
(albedo) absorbs 35-70% of it and only 5-40% penetrates the forest. The forest
soil reaches only 0.01 cal / cm2 / min of the entire solar constant, while on the
ground discovered the intensity of the solar radiation reaches 1.5 cal / cm2 / min.
The intensity of solar radiation is unevenly distributed in space and
time, due to the shape and the movement of the plant, depending on: latitude,
longitude (geographical position), altitude, local orography (relief), obtaining a
regional and zonal character with values that give macroclimate more extensive
territories (geographical areas, geographical regions, etc.). At the local level, the
shape of the slopes, the size of the slopes and their orientation, and shading are
determinants of the degree of sunstroke.
Ultraviolet radiation has a lower weight in terrestrial light, and they are
retained in the ozone layer, and infrared, with very high calorific power, are
partially retained by water vapor from the earth's atmosphere as well as carbon
dioxide, so that the entire spectrum the solar radiation from the ground and its
covering vegetation is weighted by the characteristics and the state of the
atmosphere in a life-saving direction, with all its forms of manifestation.
Nebulosity (cloud cover with clouds, cloud type, and ceiling height
position determines the intensity of light at different latitudes.
Through photosynthesis, all the luminous energy is brought to the same
denominator as the geochemical - and under this form (of chemical energy) it is
then circulated on the flow of the substance in the body of each plant through
trophic chains into the body of all animals, contributing to all the
transformations of the substances from an ecosystem and the entire biosphere.
All transformations have resulted in a great diversity of living organic
substances and plant and animal products and a wide variety of forms of energy
(metabolic energy, movement, locomotion, nervousness) as well as rhythms of
activity (life), of production.
The light budget inside the forest is diminished compared to the one
reached at the top of the canopy with the value of the albedo (% of the light
received, which is reflected in the atmosphere).
The average values of the luminous albedo are 20-25%, but its variation
limits are much higher, depending on the characteristics of the stands, their
massiveness and density, the closure mode and profile shape, the crown leaf
characteristics, the size, position, color, condition of their surface.
Obviously, the intensity of light inside the forest decreases gradually or
sharply from upper to lower floors, in any forest, more or less, depending on the
nature of the trees.
For example, in an oak tree, with a lower albedo, with wider crowns,
 Bul. Inst. Polit. Iaşi, Vol. 64 (68), Nr. 1, 2018 39

with irregularly shaped leaves, having a more uneven layout, the amount of
light absorbed will be lower and thus the budget and the light regime under the
arbores will always be more favorable than in the beech one, allowing only 15%
of the active photosynthetic radiation to pass through the canopy, absorbing
80% of the incident radiation in its photosynthetic device and 70% of the
photosynthetic active.

4. Conclusions

Each climatic factor does not separately affect the individuals and the
populations of the forest, but only in interaction with all the others.
For life and for forest, a big importance has the state of the atmosphere,
not only directly, through the ecological functions of its gas (O2, CO2, N2, etc.)
but indirectly by its ability to modify the regime of the most important climatic
factors - light and heat.
All transformations are conditioned by the rhythm of solar energy
supply, especially bright, much more intense and directly into the plant world
and less bland and indirect in the animal world, which has managed to gain
some independence from the cosmic rhythms, through improving the
respiratory system.
Consequently, the composition, structure, but above all the state and
functionality of the forest, the life of the forest are conditioned by the
distribution of light and its effects, in terms of illumination duration, intensity of
light and quality.
The forest influences not only its own light budget, but, through its
shadow stretching in different directions during the day, over a distance greater
than the average height of its tree, tempered and modeled the budget and the
light and heat regime of the perimeters around other ecosystems (meadows,
agricultural ecosystems) or uncovered lands.
The tree influences the light regime of the lower vegetation floors by
absorbing and retaining on average 35 to 70% of the incident light, and in some
cases up to 98% of the full light.
The amount of light that the other floors receive depends not only on
the direct one left by the tree, but also on the diffuse (50-75%) that either passes
through the leaves (through refraction) or is reflected from the inner leaves of
the canopy, not to the atmosphere, above the canopy, but to the ground or lower
floors or the leaves below, on the same floor, at the bottom of the crown.
Forest species have generally known demands on the intensity of light,
which, in the case of trees, refers to the values of the light intensity
characteristic of the biotope, its geographic position, altitude, shape, relief,
slope, exigencies that satisfy the installation and tree development.
Also, the plants in the lower floors have exigencies to this factor and a
specific behavior to its variation, only if they are satisfied or not, causing them
different modifications, not so much the budget and light regime of the place as
40 Alina Agafiţei and Victor Gabor

the structure and the face behavior the light of the fir tree (albedou, absorption,
shading).

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Agafiţei A., Agafiţei M., Guideline of Environment Protection, Ed. Tehnopress, Iaşi,
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Agafiţei A., Gabor V., Study Water Quality in Cuejdel Lake, Bul. Inst. Politehnic, Iaşi,
63(67), 1-2, s. Hydrotechnics, 89-97 (2017).
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Ecology & Safety, 11, Bulgaria, 142-149 (2017).
Axinte S., Agafiţei A., Chiriac C., Conventional and Sustainable Agricultural
Ecosystems., Ed. Politehnium, Iaşi, 2004.

STUDIUL INTERACŢIUNILOR ECOLOGICE ÎN MEDIUL SILVIC

(Rezumat)

Este tratată problema interacţiunilor ecologice din mediul silvic şi efectele

lor. Compoziţia, structura şi funcţiile pădurii la un moment dat sunt condiţionate de
schimbările conjuncturii de mediu în decursul timpului, dar mediul său intern, funcţia sa
protectoare sunt determinate tocmai de structura şi starea pădurii în fiecare etapă a
evoluţiei sale. Vegetaţia forestieră are o înaltă capacitate de a se opune variaţiilor
aleatorii ale factorilor ecologici, chiar şi atunci când acestea depăşesc limitele zonei lor
de toleranţă, dacă aceste variaţii se repetă des în existenţa pădurii, de fiecare dată având
intensităţi, sensuri şi durate asemănătoare.