Tree invasions in Italian forests

2022

Many forest tree species have been moved outside their native range to provide goods and services elsewhere, but some of them have become invasive, causing negative impacts on biodiversity and human activities. The assessment and knowledge on the degree and scale to which forest ecosystems are invaded by non-native trees is of paramount importance for tailored policies and strategies aiming at forest conservation. By analyzing main databases and literature and applying a four-level scale of invasion (not currently invaded and with low invasibility; potentially invasible; moderately invaded; massively invaded), we assessed the current and potential occurrence of twenty-five invasive non-nati…