Hidegvíz Valley Experimental Watershed [antikvár]

ForewordA former leader of our department, Dr. József Rácz, realised the possibility and necessity of cre-ating the experimentál catchment in the Hidegvíz Valley at the end of the 1970s and persistently called for its réalisation.In 1980 TAEG (Educational Forest Stock Company) gave our university a building formerly used as a workers' hostel to establish the first element of the research centre which was renovated in 1983. In the next two years the meteorological equipments and three interception measure gar-dens were created. Thereafter the developments stopped for a while. Further plans could not be carried out for financial reasons. Hydrological research work meant the gathering of meteorological and interception data for years financed by the department budget.The coopération with the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Department of Forest Site Survey, and especially with Dr. Péter Vig, brought about great changes in the opération, planning and development of the research centre from the beginning of the 1990's. Coopération in thinking resulted in mutuai grant applications. These grant application were successful thanked to Prof. Dr. István Szodfridt.The hydrological and climate researches were supported by OTKA for 8 years after 1995 and for an additional 4 years after a 4-year-long break. Parallel with this, the research centre was finan-cially supported by ÁESZ, PFP, OMFB, FEFA, KAC, ERFARET and TÁMOP projects from Eu-ropean Union and co-financing of the European Social Fund.As we all know, the connection between forests and water conditions are versatile and it changes during the long life-cycle of tree vegetations. As a result of this researches about forest-water topics have to be long-scale as well. However, this fundamental principie is often not realised as we have seen in the cases of many forestry and water management researches.The Hidegvíz Valley experimental watershed is a good example for maintaining a long-term research with the cooperation of researchers and generations working in related areas, despite oc-casional hard periods.dr. hábil. József Péterfalvi Director of InstituteIB