Natural resources
In the structure of the land of the City of Gradiška, agricultural land occupies 65.95% and the forests 27.45%. These are the two key natural resources on which this local community based its development. The agricultural area occupies 50.238 ha, the forests 20.908 ha, and the non-agricultural land 5.027 ha of the total land area of 76.173 ha.
Arable land, or fields along with meadows, make up about 92.54% of the total agricultural land or 46,491 ha, while pastures occupy 6.83% or 3.433 ha, and the reeds 0.63% or 314 ha. Large areas of agricultural and arable land (5.11% of agricultural land and 5.66% of arable land in the Republic of Srpska), long experience in agricultural production and a relatively good development trend in the post-war period contributed that the City of Gradiška is an area with developed agricultural production and potential for its further intensive development.
Historically, the city of Gradiška has a long tradition of forestry. By the end of the 19th century, Austria-Hungary started exploiting wood in this area. The importance of forests in the city of Gradiška is large and is reflected in the following: wood as a raw material is of great importance for the wood industry; the forests have impact on climate regulation, protect the land from erosion and have a great tourist and recreational value.
Forests and forest lands make up about 27.5% of the total land of the city of Gradiška, while the average annual wood mass increment is about 150,000 m3, while the average annual cut is about 100,000 m3. The primary (production of sawn wood) and final wood processing (furniture production) is developed in the area of the City.
Based on this natural resource, a wood processing industry with different levels of wood processing developed. Wood processing industry is the oldest industrial branch in the city of Gradiška. The first sawmill was built in 1855 in Gornji Podgradci.
The forest estate “Gradiška” manages a total of 15293.40 ha of forest area, and the remaining forest areas of 6643.23 ha are managed by private forest owners.
Clean water is an important resource that the city of Gradiška has. Under Lijevče polje according to experts,
there are significant reserves of clean, drinking water. Given the speed at which global supplies of drinking water are being reduced, it is especially important that this resource is taken into account in future development flows. In that sense, stronger and more active protection of the waters in the area of our City is necessary. The catchment area of the city of Gradiška consists of the catchment area of the Sava River and its tributaries on the area of 657.7 km2 (86,31%) and the Vrbas River basin on the area of 104.3 km2 (13,69%). The larger river flows in the City are Jablanica (with tributaries Pisarić, Bajnovac, Bukovica, Ljutava, Vrbaška, Trnova, Lubina, Jurkovica, etc.) that take surface waters from Kozara and Prosara in the Sava River, while Osorna with Borna through the canal water in Vrbas and Lake Bardača.
According to the strategic document “Development and Construction of Irrigation Systems in the Municipality of of Gradiška and the Municipality of Laktaši”, the termination of use of underground water reserves of Lijevče polje is predicted as well as solving of the irrigation problem by the construction of special purpose reservoirs for irrigation on the river basins of Jurkovica, Lubina, Vrbaška, Jablanica and Turjanica. By building these special purpose accumulations, the total volume of accumulation of 45.913 million m3 would be provided and water for irrigation of up to 11.000 ha of irrigation area would be provided.
In the area of the city of Gradiška there are various types of rocks having several types of mineral raw materials. Previous research has shown that there are coal, brick clay, technical building stone, then quartz, copper and mercury mineralization, and architectural decorative stone and others in this area. Brick clay is found in the part of alluvial deposits at the site of the Bok Jankovac site, where its organized exploitation is done. Technical building stone – Diabase is found at several sites in the area of Kozara.
The largest massif in the Trnovo – Vučijak region is exploited in an organized manner. Organized exploitation of sand and gravel is also done in the bed of the Sava River.