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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.

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.

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.

International audience; We combined stem volume increment analysis with dendroecological tools to address two unresolved issues concerning oak dieback in Mediterranean areas: early detection of changes in stand growth, and identification of mechanisms for observed growth declines.* We reconstructed productivity of a stored coppice formed by Turkey oak (Quercus cerris) to test if its growth decline was linked to climatic variability, while also accounting for age-related and sociological factors.* Drought in May-June and in prior-year late summer-autumn was negatively correlated with current growth during 1974-2006. Previous November water balance was the strongest signal. Moving Correlation Functions (11 y windows) indicated that the May-June signal remained dominant until 1996, thereafter falling to non-significant values in parallel with the May-June water balance drying trend; at the same time the previous autumn correlations reached significant values. Since 1994 there was a two-year lagged response to June water balance, suggesting that, when growth declined, loss of current-year climate signals was accompanied by the emergence of previous-year ones.* Growth and productivity of deciduous oaks in Mediterranean environments is linked to late spring-early summer hydrologic balance; at both annual and decadal timescales, oak growth decline was associated with a delayed response to climate.