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The paper provides a summary regarding the current state of silviculture and the use of sweet chestnut wood (Castanea sativa Mill.) in Italy. Existing opportunities for chestnut silviculture are very promising because sweet chestnut covers nearly 800,000 hectares in Italy, representing almost 2.6% of the total area of the country, including 7.5% of national forest areas. In some geographic areas, especially in central-southern Italy, sweet chestnut is the only driver of the sawmill economy. In Italy, this species is typically harvested to produce solid beams and poles. In the field of load-bearing structures, research and innovation in silviculture have provided solutions to the growing use of industrial technologies, and sweet chestnut has become integrated into European standards with the same relevanceas the most commonly most used wood species, such as Norway spruce. However, diversification in wood products is lacking in regions that produce sweet chestnut, as the sawmills tend to be very chestnut-centric, and in terms of the types of final products sweet chestnut is applied to. The typical end uses for sweet chestnut represents a major weakness associated with the massive exploitation of chestnut wood. In addition, the production of sawmills in Italy has decreased recently due to the crisis-driven reductions inactivity. This transition has affected the traditional building sector. The most common wood quality defects associated with sweet chestnut, which limit the use of this species for other wood products, are well known by producers. To boost the demand for this wood, efforts must be made to identify more versatile uses for this wood, promoting differential forest management systems to obtain stems that can be utilised in other types of final products. A list of possible actions is considered to increase the applications for this species, which represents one of the best opportunities to develop a short supply chain.

This paper reviews the literature relating to the relationship between light availability in the understory and the main qualitative and quantitative attributes of stand overstory usually considered in forest management and planning (species composition, density, tree sizes, etc.) as well as their changes as consequences of harvesting. The paper is divided in two sections: the first one reviews studies which investigated the influence of species composition on understory light conditions; the second part examines research on the relationships among stand parameters determined from dendrometric field data and the radiation on understory layer. The objective was to highlight which are the most significant stand traits and management features to build more practical models for predicting light regimes in any forest stand and, in more general terms, to support forest managers in planning and designing silvicultural treatments that retain structure in different way in order to meet different objectives.

This review presents a multidisciplinary framework for integrating the ecological, regulatory, procedural and technical aspects of forest management for fires prevention under Mediterranean environments. The aims are to: i) provide a foreground of wildfire scenario; ii) illustrate the theoretical background of forest fuel management; iii) describe the available fuel management techniques and mechanical operations for fire prevention in forest and wildland-urban interfaces, with exemplification of case-studies; iv) allocate fire prevention activities under the hierarchy of forest planning. The review is conceived as an outline commentary discussion targeted to professionals, technicians and government personnel involved in forestry and environmental management.

The prescription of stand rotation according to site conditions and economic targets requires yield information that expresses stand productivity under different site-classes. This is particularly relevant for the optimal management of chestnut coppices allowing the production of timber assortments sized differently. This paper reports a new yield model built for chestnut coppices of the Cimini and Vicani mountains (Central Italy), according to three site index classes. The model focuses on the development of stands after an intense thinning carried out at the ages of 13-14 years. The model is compared with two previous yield tables built for chestnut coppice forests living in the same area and including one site index class only. The study stresses the high productivity of chestnut coppices growing on the volcanic soils of Cimini and Vicani mountains and shows how the growth course following intense thinning allows to get stems with large mean volume at the end of rotation. In the light of the most recent studies on the causes of ring shake, i.e. the most relevant defect of chestnut wood, the negative consequences on timber quality originating from the current thinning regime are also outlined.