A – The “Schoef­fiels” is situa­ted 430 m above the sea lev­el and repres­ents the hig­hest point of the “Gut­land” part of Luxem­bourg.
B – The natu­ral for­est “Natur­bësch”

The nat­ur­al forests called “Natur­bësch” are wood­lands defined as a nat­ur­al reserve and not des­ig­nat­ed for forestry use, in order to pre­serve them in their nat­ur­al form.

The objec­tives of this pro­ce­dure are following:

• Allow­ing the for­est to devel­op its own ecol­o­gy sys­tem and at the same time the biodiversity
• Cre­ate obser­va­tion and demon­stra­tion posts in order to sup­port forestry research
• Cre­ation of genet­ic reserves and preser­va­tion of a genet­ic diversity
• Pro­mote leisure and edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties linked to this type of forest

In the natu­ral for­est reserve “Lang­muer” there is no fore­stry management

It had been planned that up to the year 2010, 5% of the entire nation­al wood­land areas will be defined as “in free evo­lu­tion”. These forests have to show a con­tin­u­ous area of at least 50ha and be rep­re­sen­ta­tive for most of the upcom­ing for­est forms.

Anoth­er con­di­tion should be that the for­est is very close to an ini­tial untouched nat­ur­al sta­tus, prac­ti­cal­ly with­out human influ­ence and achiev­ing the evo­lu­tion cri­te­ria as age and struc­ture of the trees, pres­ence of dead­wood and rare species.

For those areas where the veg­e­ta­tion is still young and in a cer­tain “pio­neer” sta­tus, a vis­i­ble muta­tion can be observed in lap of 5 to 10 years time. For the old­er for­est stands, you will have to wait at least sev­er­al decades before being able to see a vis­i­ble alteration.

Analy­ses, obser­va­tions and sys­tem­at­ic eval­u­a­tions will wit­ness these muta­tions under a form of monitoring.

In order to inform and sen­si­tize the pub­lic, the nation­al For­est Admin­is­tra­tion pre­views to install infor­ma­tive signs and the­mat­ic edu­ca­tion­al paths in those types of areas.

The forestry reserve “Laangmuer”

The forestry reserve “Laang­muer” is extend­ing over 103.37 ha and is all nation­al prop­er­ty with the excep­tion of 2 paths, cross­ing the reserve and belong­ing to the munic­i­pal­i­ty. This reserve stands for acer­bic beech groves, grow­ing on sand­stone lay­ers. 83% of the sur­face is cov­ered by Mel­i­ca-Fage­tum grass beech groves and only 7% by the Luzu­la grass beech groves. In its major part this for­est is a sort of “cathe­dral for­est” mean­ing that there are only high trunk trees with prac­ti­cal­ly no low herb lay­er. It is divid­ed into 2 dis­tinct parts: the zone of the actu­al for­est and the oth­er part, a sort of buffer area for­est, sur­round­ing and pro­tect­ing the inner wood­land from out­er influ­ences. Because of its adja­cen­cy to Lux­em­bourg City, this for­est reserve is emi­nent­ly inter­est­ing for the cit­i­zens will­ing to find rest in nature.

The mel­i­ca unif­lora grass, typi­cal for this kind of for­est gives the name to this mel­i­ca beech grove.

The white luzu­la grass is repre­sen­ta­tive for the acer­bic soil of the beech groves.

One more cri­te­ria for being clas­si­fied as a nat­ur­al forestry reserve is the pres­ence of a dead­wood. Numer­ous ani­mal species, espe­cial­ly insects are able to find their habi­tat in deadwood.