Good condition of soil is necessary for maintaining forests for next generations

Soil is the key to long-term prosperity of the forest

Soil is an extremely valuable resource and the key to long-term prosperity of the forest. Ensuring consistent and sustainable conservation of soil is essential to maintain forest productivity and help forests to adapt to climate change. Forest management activities can impact soil both positively and negatively. Healthy soil is a prerequisite for sustainable forestry. Therefore, it’s extremely important that foresters understand potential negative impacts of their operations on soil and how to mitigate them.

Our forest management practices are based on national best practice guidelines.  These guidelines include actions to protect soil and water, conserve biodiversity, and protect environmentally valuable habitats or culturally important sites. Guidelines are incorporated into the management systems and have been implemented over decades. Best available techniques are applied in all operations (planting, harvesting, road construction) to minimise soil erosion and compaction, and to maximise nutrient cycling.

In Uruguay, soil conservation is one key focus area when planning the establishment of a new plantation. To maintain the productivity of the forest plantations for the next 50 years or more, we strive to ensure that the land areas where plantations are established are well conserved.

UPM plantations in Uruguay are mostly established on forest priority soils (FPS) as defined by the Uruguayan State. The definition of FPS in the late 1980’s represents a particularly good case of modern territorial planning. FPS have low productivity for traditional land uses in Uruguay, such as beef and wool production from cattle and sheep grazing on open grasslands, but at the same time they have particularly good productivity for forest plantations. Before planting a new area, we establish a plantation project with the national authorities in Ministries of Agriculture and Environment.

Eucalyptus plantations require only small amounts of nutrients to grow and are very efficient in utilising the available nutrients. Complemented with our harvesting method to leave leaves, branches and bark on the ground to decompose and recycle nutrients back to the soil enables the high productivity of soil.