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Mediterranean stone pine reforestations are common characteristics of the Italian Tyrrhenian coast, which mostly maintain uniform and monolayered stand structures. However, improving structural diversity is an effective climate change adaptation strategy in forest management. The aim of this study was to implement a methodology which allows distinct reforested areas such as a single green infrastructure to be managed according to the surrounding land use and the characteristics of the forest stands. 240 hectares of Mediterranean stone pine forests located along a 16 km strip of the Lazio coast (Central Italy) were mapped. Twelve attributes describing the pine stands and showing possible constraints for future management decisions were associated to each forest patch. A hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to group the pinewood patches according to their similarity level and five different groups were identified. For each group, different silvicultural methods were proposed to guide the compositional and structural evolution of the stands, in order to make them suitable for providing services required locally and increasing overall diversity at landscape scale. The results of the study highlight how coastal land uses can offer effective inputs to differentiate the management of forest systems and therefore achieve greater variety and resilience in the landscape over time. This approach is particularly useful in the case of very homogeneous stands such as the stone pine reforestations under study.

Urban forests can provide essential environmental and social functions if properly planned and managed. Tree inventories and measurements are a critical part of assessing and monitoring the size, growth, and health condition of urban trees. In this context, the parameters usually collected are diameter at breast height (DBH) and total height, but additional data about crown dimensions (width, length, and crown projection) are required for a comprehensive tree assessment. These data are generally collected by urban foresters through field surveys using tree calipers or diameter tape for DBH and the electronic ipsometer/clinometer to measure tree height and crown size. Greater detail could be achieved using a digital instrument such as Field-Map, a portable computer station, to quickly realize dimensional and topographic surveys of trees and forest stands. Additionally, the incorporation of a LIDAR scanner into a smartphone such as the iPhone 12 Pro has made this device able to measure tree attributes as well as additional spatial data in the field. In this study, we tested these 3 different measurement systems in a field sampling of an urban forest and compared them in terms of measurable parameters, accuracy, cost, and time efficiency. Furthermore, we discussed the pros and cons of each measurement approach and how the resulted data can be used to evaluate ecosystem services of trees and provide guidance on tree management in order to reduce potential risks or disservices.

In recent history, both a growing awareness of how scientific and societal uncertainty impacts management decisions and of the intrinsic value of nature have suggested new approaches to forest management, with a growing debate in forest science over the need for a paradigmatic shift from the classic conventional world view, based on determinism, predictability, and output-oriented management, towards a world view that has roots in complex adaptive systems theory and is consistent with a nature-based ethic. A conceptual framework under this context is provided by systemic silviculture. In this discussion, we analyze how this approach can be linked to three fundamental moments of the history of forestry and forest science: the Dauerwald theory, Gurnaud’s control method, and the origins of environmental ethics. Relationships with the recent history of forest management science and current research perspectives are also highlighted.

The Italian forest area has been increasing for several decades, but it is largely under conditions of abandonment due to the suspension of any form of active management. The article highlighted the positive aspects and the critical issues inherent in this situation. On a landscape scale, abandonment is seen as a positive factor that can determine the improvement of biodiversity over time but, since it mainly affects the forests of mountain areas, there is a real risk of compromising important protective functions that contribute to guaranteeing the quality of life of local communities, especially in the face of climate change. Logging operations always have a significant impact on stands but only through silviculture, if implemented with a systemic approach, it is possible to give the forest structure and composition that make it adequate to carry out protective functions. Forestry must therefore be relaunched as a tool to guarantee biological functionality, perpetuity and the use of the forest, increasing resistance, resilience and adaptability of the ecosystems in the face of global change

Forests are widely recognized as important landscape elements which contribute to human health and well-being. They provide benefits derived from direct and indirect experiences of contact with nature by reducing psychological and physical stress, thus creating positive feelings and facilitating the recovery of psychological resources. In order to establish or manage forests for recreational purposes, it is essential to know which forest stand structure features and indicators are linked to actual or perceived psychological restoration. The aim of this study is to evaluate the association between individual factors, perceived restorativeness, stand structure attributes and self-reported physical-psychological benefits obtained when visiting woodlands in urban or peri-urban areas especially coastal Italian stone pine forests using a quantile regression approach. Perceived restorativeness components such as ‘being-away’, ‘fascination’ and ‘compatibility’ emerged as significant predictors of visitors’ perceived psychological benefits, showing a positive and significant association in all of the quantiles under study. Stand density, measured by basal area per hectare of understory trees and shrubs negatively influences the perception of the benefits obtained, holding constant the other covariates.

Site conditions and forest management affect dendrometric parameters of chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) coppices, but there is modest knowledge on the effect of stand dendrometric characters on physical and mechanical wood characteristics. The aim of this study was to verify these relationships in chestnut coppices that were 12–14 years old. Wood density, compression and bending strength, shrinkages were measured on shoots of five different stand in a vulcanic site in Monte Amiata (Central – Italy). Investigated stands differ in number of stools/ha and dominant height, diameter/basal area of the shoots. The main difference in the physical characters among the stands is density. The initial results of the study showed that physical, mechanical wood characters are more dependent by the shoot than by the site. There is a positive relationships between the number of stools/ha and density and a negative one among shoot dominant height and basal area with wood density. Spectroscopic profile by FTIR has not showed relevant differences among the stands. Wood anatomy has showed the breakpoint at cellular level.

International audience; Context: European Union policies for sustainable development converge towards the enhancement of forest resources. Hypothesis: enlargement of the range of wood products and increase in timber products usage can only be achieved if these products are more competitive than conventional.Aims: With respect to conifer timber, chestnut timber has competitive characteristics. However, chestnut timber has had very few opportunities for market development in the last decades. As result of its competitiveness margins, the laminated chestnut beams process has recently developed.For this product, a conventional market or competitiveness space has been established as well as its extension in relation to non-market characteristics.Methods: Market space has been defined by determining - the producer’s reserve price limits, using the cost approach criteria; - the consumer’s upper limit, using the market comparison approach; - the expansion of the upper limit for the non-market characteristics, the environmentally friendly consumer price, determined through interviews with a sample of responsible consumers.RResults Limits are: - the producer’s reserve price is 752.68 €/m3 - the consumer’s reserve price is 918.77 €/m3 - in the main regional market (Rome district), the environmentally friendly consumer’s price is 1164.08 €/m3.Conclusion: Knowledge of the various market limits of chestnut timber allows producers to assess its competitive margins. Conservation over time of these margins, however, requires dedicated governance, as well as the adoption of a forest strategy aimed at promoting the timber production quality and a marketing plan to promote the knowledge of the characteristics of chestnut wood (market and non-market characteristics) and increase the number of responsible consumers.

The ecological and economic relevance of sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) has long been related to its widespread geographical distribution and multipurpose product potential. In Central Italy, chestnut management represents a paradigmatic example of the potential conflict between landowner targets and biodiversity conservation: options for preserving stand-scale biodiversity are not fully considered as current management is based on monospecific, even-aged coppice stands and clearcutting on wide areas. Relationships between silvicultural treatment and floristic diversity of chestnut coppices are here investigated focusing the attention on rotation length and on the role of thinning. Seven coppice stands were selected in such a way to be of similar size (about 10 ha) and to cover a wide range of ages and a different number of thinnings. Plot sampling was performed across the stands and their floristic diversity was compared and analyzed by means of indicators in order to assess statistical relations...

Italian stone pine is a landmark of Mediterranean coastal areas. Today, pinewoods represent environmental amenity areas at risk, being under siege from intensive urbanisation. We present an emblematic case study in Rome’s coastal strip where urban encroachment around pinewoods is somewhat overlooked by urban planning, which may be threatening for their conservation. We studied: (i) changes in land use intensification in the pinewoods’ surroundings over the past 60 years (1949–2008), by means of a synthetic index of landscape conservation (ILC) ranging from 0 (maximum level of anthropogenic landscape alteration) to 1 (maximum level of landscape naturalness); (ii) influence of different landscape protection level on land use intensification. Findings show that in areas with low levels of landscape protection, the ILC had been decreasing in the first 100-m surrounding pinewoods, and within the 1-km buffer. The ILC had been rather stable within areas with high levels of landscape protection. Lessons learnt have implications for spatial development strategies to protect coastal pinewoods from external pressures due to future (planned) urban densification in their surroundings.

A number of international agreements and commitments emphasize the importance of appropriate monitoring protocols and assessments as prerequisites for sound conservation and management of the world’s forest ecosystems. Mandated periodic surveys, like forest inventories, provide a unique opportunity to identify and properly satisfy natural resource management information needs. Distinctively, there is an increasing need for detecting diversity by means of unambiguous diversity measures. Because all diversity measures are functions of tree species abundances, estimation of tree diversity indices and profiles is inevitably performed by estimating tree species abundances and then estimating indices and profiles as functions of the abundance estimates. This strategy can be readily implemented in the framework of current forest inventory approaches, where tree species abundances are routinely estimated by means of plots placed onto the surveyed area in accordance with probabilistic schemes. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of this strategy by reviewing theoretical results from published case studies. Under uniform random sampling (URS), that is when plots are uniformly and independently located on the study region, consistency and asymptotic normality of diversity index estimators follow from standard limit theorems as the sampling effort increases. In addition, variance estimation and bias reduction are achieved using the jackknife method. Despite its theoretical simplicity, URS may lead to uneven coverage of the study region. In order to avoid unbalanced sampling, the use of tessellation stratified sampling (TSS) is suggested. TSS involves covering the study region by a polygonal grid and randomly selecting a plot in each polygon. Under TSS, the diversity index estimators are consistent, asymptotically normal and more precise than those achieved using URS. Variance estimation is possible and there is no need to reduce bias.

This is the final paper of: Multifactor empirical mapping of the protective function of forests against landslide occurrence: statistical approaches and a case study- published iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry,Volume 9,Issue 3, Pages 383-393 (2016) doi:https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor1740-008Published: Jan 16, 2016 - Copyright © 2016 SISEF Abstract Forests are increasingly valued for services beyond timber and non-timber products including land protection with respect to events such as landslides, soil erosion, floods and avalanches. The most important properties of a protective forest are its ecological and mechanical stability. Planning and implementing multifunctional forest management in protective forests is challenging because of the trade-offs and synergies among the many functions of the forest. In this study, a multifactor empirical method is presented for assessing the protective role of forests on a stand scale with respect to landslide occurrence. Multifactor methodologies typically estimate landslide susceptibility exploiting the relationship between past landslide patterns and site characteristics. Two statistical approaches were here applied to assess the probability of landslide occurrence: the weight-of-evidence technique and the logistic regression technique. Statistical analysis was performed on the basis of landslide detachment zone only. The question of how to estimate protective forest function was answered through the comparison of models established with different sets of predicting factors. This study ultimately aims to provide a decision- support tool focused on mapping the potential role of forests in landslideprone areas. A case study from the Italian Alps was considered. The density of landslide detachment outside forest areas proves to be more than twice than that within forest areas.