Acta Scientiarum Polonorum
Silvarum Colendarum Ratio et Industria Lignaria

Abstract This study constitutes an attempt to analyse the filling of forest space in two-generation felling stands growing on an upland forest site. The purpose of the performed investigations was to determine the area and space of a single tree in the layer of the young generation and the influence of the old forest on these tree parameters. The ex-perimental material was collected in 2001 from the area of the Krasiczyn Forest Division (RDLP Krosno). The analysis was performed in 28 test sites in which the proportion of the common beech in the old forest composition was at least 70%. The coefficients cal-culated in this study were characterised by a fairly high variability, especially in the field of the tree unit area. As a rule, this variability was higher in the beech young crop than in the fir one. It is to be presumed that this was a natural outcome of diversified structural traits resulting from a conscious, albeit subjectively realised, process of forest utilisation and forest self-regeneration. The performed analysis failed to reveal a significant influ-ence of old trees on the size of the area and space in the layer of the young generation de-veloping under their canopy. Therefore, there is a need to continue this kind of investiga-tions, also in stands characterised by a different structure, with the aim to verify the use-fulness of the applied indices in spatial analyses concerning structural traits of the Carpa-thian beech forest. The identification of the filling parameters of the forest space may help foresters in planning their economical recommendations and the achievement of appropri-ate silvicultural tasks.