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History is generally defined as “the study of past events, particularly in human affairs” and is mostly understood when presented chronologically. That's why someone also defined it as the ‘chronological record of the past'. Knowing the past is extremely important for any society and human being. Past gives us insights into our evolving behavior in many matters of life. The book is seen as a unique opportunity to preserve the memory of the Italian history of soil science. It represents a milestone and a cultural heritage. Moreover, the book is a sort of ideal bridge between the pioneers of soil science in Italy and the young generation of researchers, contributing to spreading awareness of the importance of soil as a fundamental resource.

The open access book aims to show the readers novel, relevant and reproducible power of synergistic collaborations between European research groups and stakeholders with the objective to synthesize the existing knowledge and expertise about fire management and hazard and defining a concerted research agenda that promotes an integrated approach to create fire-resilient landscapes, taking into account biological, biochemical and physical, but also socio-economic, historical, geographical, sociological, perception and policy constraints. This is an urgent societal need due to the expected further intensification and geographical spreading of wildfire regimes under Global Change. Fire has been part of the Earth's System for the last 400 million years, and humans are the sole species that controls and manages fire. We have used fire for over a million years, both, as hunter-gatherers managing the landscape with fire and as farmers using fire as a low-cost, efficient and ecological tool for clearing and maintaining the productivity of the land. Fire has been highlighted as the most influential element in the development of human societies. The increase in prolonged dry and hot periods observed in many regions of the world is exacerbating the risk of fire. The causes of increased fire risk are not only linked to climate change but are also a consequence of economic and social changes and political decisions. Over the past few decades, many countries'rural areas have seen significant depopulation and a reduction in land management as residents moved to cities or even other countries in search of work. The resulting rural depopulation has led to revegetation of the abandoned agricultural land, which favors fire spread. The enhanced risk of fires is moving beyond the capacity of even the best-funded wildland firefighting teams and therefore calls for the development of new approaches to fire management that are key nowadays at different scales. Instead of focusing primarily on increasing firefighting capabilities, a more effective approach is needed that focuses on long-term fire prevention through vegetation management by reducing fuel load or managing fuel type and fuel continuity at a landscape level. FIRElinks (COST Action CA18135) is developing the EU-spanning network of scientists and practitioners involved in forest fire research and land management with backgrounds such as fire dynamics, fire risk management, fire effects on vegetation, fauna, soil and water and socio-economic, historical, geographical, political perception and land management approaches. Among the different Working Groups, number 5 is aimed to connect communities from different scientific and geographic backgrounds, allowing the discussion of different experiences and the emergence of new approaches to fire research, human management, regional issues and socio-economic aspects.

Mit Hilfe des Waldmonitoring können die Zusammensetzung unserer Wälder artspezifisch kartiert und deren Zustand bzw. Vitalität beobachtet werden. Auf bundesweiten Stichprobenflächen werden regelmäßig Erhebungen zur Artenzusammensetzung und Vitalität des Waldes durchgeführt. Sturmereignisse, Trockenstress und Angriffe durch Insekten führen zu Veränderungen des Waldes und beinträchtigen somit auch die Ökosystemleistungen (ÖSL) des Waldes, wie z.B. die Kohlenstoffspeicherung oder die Wasserspeicherung im Waldboden. Das aktuelle Waldmonitoring ist nicht mehr adäquat, es fehlt an einer hohen zeitlichen und räumlichen Auflösung. Es muss zu einem transparenten und aussagefähigen Instrument der Risikoanalyse weiterentwickelt werden, um den Herausforderungen des Klimawandels entgegenzuwirken. Neben den derzeitigen Stichproben sind moderne Methoden der Fernerkundung geeignet, um Informationen zu Risiken in Bezug auf Waldbrandgefahr, Sturmereignisse, Insekten- und Trockenstress bundesweit bereitstellen zu können. Auch Waldbaumaßnahmen könnten auf ihre Wirkungen überprüft werden. Weiterhin könnten Konzepte zur Quantifizierung der ÖSL und deren Honorierung daraus abgeleitet werden. Waldmonitoring wird eine Schlüsselstellung bei der Entwicklung von Anpassungsstrategien einnehmen, da zukünftige Waldbaumaßnahmen, Förderungen, Forschungsthemen und Gesetzesänderungen auf der Basis von Waldmonitoring getroffen werden können. Das vorliegende Buch zeigt anhand von zwei Fallstudien, wie auf Basis von frei zugänglichen Geodaten (Satellitenbilder, Luftbilder, Geländemodelle, Klimadaten etc.) und nachvollziehbaren Analyseschritten ein Waldmonitoring durchgeführt werden kann.

Since the 1970s and particularly the works of Tüxen (1978) and Géhu & Rivas-Martínez (1981), dynamico-catenal phytosociology has facilitated the integration of vegetation dynamics by more precisely describing the trajectories of vegetation series. A national habitat mapping program (CarHAB), launched by France's Ministry of Ecology, aims to map the vegetation and vegetation series of metropolitan France at a scale of 1: 25,000 by 2025. In this context, Corsica has been selected as a pilot region, due to its unique characteristics regarding Mediterranean and alticole vegetation. This book describes in detail the vegetation series and geoseries (ecology, structure, dynamic trajectories, effects of anthropogenic factors on vegetation dynamics, catenal positioning in the landscape) of two Corsican sectors: Cap Corse and Biguglia pond. These two study sites were selected using two methods: • For Cap Corse, the typology and mapping are based on an inductive approach, which seeks to understand the dynamics of vegetation by drawing on the mature, substitutional, pioneering and anthropogenic associations likely to exist within a tessellar envelope. These various dynamic stages characterize “the vegetation series” (sigmetum or synassociation), the fundamental unit of symphytosociology (Géhu 2006; Biondi 2011). The aim of symphytosociology is, therefore, to define the vegetation series; in other words, it seeks to identify the repetitive combinations of syntaxa under homogeneous ecological conditions. • For Biguglia pond, the typology and mapping are based on a deductive approach, which combines (under SIG) the ecological descriptor maps with the vegetation mapping, in order to reveal the tesselas and the natural potential vegetation that underlies them. Thanks to the improvement of GIS techniques, this approach has been frequently used to characterize plant landscapes from vegetation to vegetation geoseries since the 2000s, with applications to the conservation management of natural and semi-natural environments.

Warm-temperate deciduous forests are'southern', mainly oak-dominated deciduous forests, as found over the warmer southern parts of the temperate deciduous forest regions of East Asia, Europe and eastern North America. Climatic analysis has shown that these forests extend from typical temperate climates to well into the warm-temperate zone, in areas where winters are a bit too cold for the ‘zonal'evergreen broad-leaved forests normally expected in that climatic zone. This book is the first to recognize and describe these southern deciduous forests as an alternative to the evergreen forests of the warm-temperate zone. This warm-temperate zone will become more important under global warming, since it represents the contested transition between deciduous and evergreen forests and between tropical and temperate floristic elements. This book is dedicated to the memory of Tatsuō Kira, the imaginative Japanese ecologist who first noticed and described this general zonation exception and who proposed the name warm-temperate deciduous forest.