Kreitzberg natural forest cell
The Kreitzberg natural forest cell is a piece of forest in the area of the municipality of Simmerath , part of the deciduous forest nature reserve at Hasselbachgraben , which is not managed according to the principle of the North Rhine-Westphalian natural forest cells . The size of the natural forest cell Kreitzberg is 11.9 hectares.
This natural forest cell is located in the High Fens , near the village of Zweifall . The terrain slopes down to the northeast towards the valley of the Krebsbach. The altitude ranges from 400 to 445 m above sea level. NHN . The climate is subatlantic with little fluctuations in temperature and precipitation during the year. The annual mean temperature is 7.7 ° C, the annual precipitation is quite high at 1100 mm. The area belongs to the northern Eifel , the rocks are quartzite , ribbon slate and phyllitic slate . Above the rock layers there is a cover layer made of floating earth and loess clay , which is only thin and from which the soil has formed. The soil types change in small areas depending on the relief, on most of the area there are pseudogleye and pseudogley brown earths , which show a tendency to podsolation . Brown earth can be found on stony slopes, and Nassgley in a depression . The groundwater level also depends heavily on the relief. The humus layer is mostly in the form of mold , more rarely raw humus . The nutrient content of the soil is usually only low, the pH value is in the strongly acidic range.
The stock can be traced back to the year 1839, when a birch forest, which was then 24 years old, grew on the area. The northern and southern parts of the natural forest cell belonged to different forest divisions, the northern part, called "Kreutzberg", contained a few oaks in addition to the young birch trees, while in the southern part, "Schüttepohl", quite a lot of older oaks and beeches grew at that time. In the following time oaks and pines were brought in. But the stock was patchy and so in 1892 and again in 1909 the proposal was made to clear the area and plant spruce. This did not happen, however, so that many of the trees that exist today date from the mid-19th century and there are even older trees in the southern part.
Today the forest can be classified as a pipe grass- sessile oak-beech forest, the plant community belongs to the Fago-Quercetum molinietosum . In the western, higher-lying and therefore better-drained part, the common beech ( Fagus sylvatica ) dominates, the sessile oak ( Quercus petraea ) is only occasionally added. The oak becomes dominant in the western, wetted part, here there are also sand birch ( Betula pendula ) and bog birch ( Betula pubescens ) in the tree layer . In a few places there is a quarry forest with birch and black alder ( Alnus glutinosa ). The shrub layer under the beeches consists only of their young growth, under oaks the mountain ash ( Sorbus aucuparia ) appears. The herbaceous ground vegetation consists mainly of white grove ( Luzula albida ), blueberry ( Vaccinium myrtillus ), bracken ( Pteridium aquilinum ) and wiry corn ( Deschampsia flexuosa ). The vegetation changes in small areas in the quarry forest and on an old coal pile.
The current composition of the plant species largely corresponds to that of natural vegetation. The broken forest remains are typical of the more humid areas of the Eifel and are still intact. The subject of scientific observation in this natural forest cell is the further development of red beech and sessile oak, their rejuvenation and mixing ratio.
supporting documents
- State Institute for Ecology, Landscape Development and Forest Planning (Hrsg.): Natural forest cells in North Rhine-Westphalia . Part I. 1975. pp. 15-21.
- Natural forest cell No. 01, Kreitzberg. Landesbetrieb Wald und Holz Nordrhein-Westfalen, accessed on February 1, 2016 .
Coordinates: 50 ° 40 ′ 50 ″ N , 6 ° 16 ′ 39 ″ E