Changes in the forest ecosystems in areas impacted by aridization in south-western Romania

Background: in the past few decades, global climate change has accentuated the intensification of aridization insouth-western romania, with direct and indirect consequences on the quality of forest ecosystems. in addition toqualitative deterioration, the quantitative changes brought about by intensive anthropic deforestation have createdthe conditions for a decline in the size of forest areas on vast tracts of land. the paper aims to analyze thequalitative and quantitative changes in the forest ecosystems in south-western romania, changes due to thesynergic context of the global climate changes and the anthropic pressures of the past three decades. in order tocapture the evolution of aridization in the study area, specific aridization indexes have been calculated, such as thede martonne index and the unep aridity index. 1990 and 2011 satellite images have been used in order to quantifythe qualitative changes.results: the results obtained indicated that, in the past two decades, the quality of the biomass declined as aresult of the increase in the climatic aridity conditions (de martonne si unep aridity index, indicating in the lastdecades, annual values under 15 mm/°c, and under 0.5 mm/mm, that means that the values situated under thesethresholds, describe arid and semi-arid climate conditions). also, the uncontrolled logging across vast surfacescaused the loss of forest ecosystems by 7% in the overall study area, during the last three decades.conclusions: the severe effects of aridization meant, first of all, a significant decline in the quality of the ecosystemservices supplied by forests. in the absence of viable actions to correct the present situation, the extremelyundesirable consequences of an ecological and social nature will arise in the near future.