Search results for " Forest management"

Plant functional trait response to environmental drivers across European temperate forest understorey communities

2020

Functional traits respond to environmental drivers, hence evaluating trait-environment relationships across spatial environmental gradients can help to understand how multiple drivers influence plant communities. Global-change drivers such as changes in atmospheric nitrogen deposition occur worldwide, but affect community trait distributions at the local scale, where resources (e.g. light availability) and conditions (e.g. soil pH) also influence plant communities. We investigate how multiple environmental drivers affect community trait responses related to resource acquisition (plant height, specific leaf area (SLA), woodiness, and mycorrhizal status) and regeneration (seed mass, lateral s…

2021

Sustainable forest management plays a key role for forest biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services (BES), including the important service of carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation. Forest managers, however, find themselves in the increasingly complex planning situation to balance the often conflicting demands in BES. To cope with this situation, a prototype of a decision support system (DSS) for strategic (long-term) planning at the forest enterprise level was developed in the present project. The DSS was applied at three case study enterprises (CSEs) in Northern Switzerland, two lowland and one higher-elevation enterprise, for a 50-year time horizon (2010 to 2060…

Drivers of above-ground understorey biomass and nutrient stocks in temperate deciduous forests

2020

The understorey in temperate forests can play an important functional role, depending on its biomass and functional characteristics. While it is known that local soil and stand characteristics largely determine the biomass of the understorey, less is known about the role of global change. Global change can directly affect understorey biomass, but also indirectly by modifying the overstorey, local resource availability and growing conditions at the forest floor. In this observational study across Europe, we aim at disentangling the impact of global-change drivers on understorey biomass and nutrient stocks, from the impact of overstorey characteristics and local site conditions. Using piecewi…

The Reproductive Strategy as an Important Trait for the Distribution of Lower-Trunk Epiphytic Lichens in Old-Growth vs. Non-Old Growth Forests

2021

(1) Research Highlights: The work studied the beta diversity patterns of epiphytic lichens as a function of their reproductive strategies in old-growth and non-old growth forests from the Mediterranean area. (2) Background and Objectives: The reproductive strategies of lichens can drive the dispersal and distribution of species assemblages in forest ecosystems. To further investigate this issue, we analyzed data on epiphytic lichen diversity collected from old-growth and non-old growth forest sites (36 plots) located in Cilento National Park (South Italy). Our working hypothesis was that the dispersal abilities due to the different reproductive strategies drove species beta diversity depend…

APPLICAZIONE DI CRITERI E INDICATORI DELLA CERTIFICAZIONE PEFC DI GESTIONE FORESTALE SOSTENIBILE: DUE CASI STUDIO A CONFRONTO NEL TERRITORIO SICILIANO

2018

La Sicilia non ha ancora complessi forestali la cui gestione sostenibile sia stata certificata. Questo lavoro è volto a analizzare la possibilità di applicare i criteri e indicatori di certificazione di GFS secondo lo schema PEFC a due casi studio: i boschi del comune di Bivona (AG) e una foresta situata sulle Madonie (PA). Entrambi sono rappresentativi di ambienti ecologici diversi e importanti dell’isola. L’analisi pone in luce le criticità più significative della gestione attualmente adottata e la mancanza di comunicazione con i portatori d’interesse. Application of Criteria and Indicators of Sustainable Forest Management PEFC Certification: two case studies in Sicily Sicily currently ha…

Forest Road Planning, Construction and Maintenance to Improve Forest Fire Fighting: a Review

2019

Forest roads play a key-role in fire fighting activities. In fact, all ground-based activities are strictly related to the presence of forest roads as access to fire edge. In spite of this important role, forest roads are often planned and built without considering their use in fire fighting, and this also occurs in literature, where few studies are dedicated to the importance of forest roads in fire fighting. A well-developed and well-maintained forest road network is the answer to different needs in fire management. The objective of this review is to clarify basic principles for obtaining efficient road network also for fire fighting, collecting, defining and resuming the main roles, the …

Gestione sostenibile delle foreste Mediterranee e uso energetico delle biomasse forestali residuali

2014

he book describes the reasons that led the Regional Department of Rural and Territorial Development to take part in the PROFORBIOMED Project. They can be summarized by the need to dispose of a tool for the sustainable management of all the state-owned forests of the Region. As a matter of fact, the Project aims at developing a model of sustainable forest management, through the recovery and reuse of wood scraps from ordinary silvicultural operations, to be used for the production of power and heat inside of a process adopting natural renewable energy sources. The main actions taken and the methodologies adopted are described, as well as the principles and instruments required for the settin…

Sustainable Forest Operations (SFO): A new paradigm in a changing world and climate

2018

The effective implementation of sustainable forest management depends largely on carrying out forest operations in a sustainable manner. Climate change, as well as the increasing demand for forest products, requires a re-thinking of forest operations in terms of sustainability. In this context, it is important to understand the major driving factors for the future development of forest operations that promote economic, environmental and social well-being. The main objective of this paper is to identify important issues concerning forest operations and to propose a new paradigm towards sustainability in a changing climate, work and environmental conditions. Previously developed concepts of f…

New Business Models for innovating the cork sector and contrasting cork oak woodland abandonment

2021

The traditional agro-silvo-pastoral system is characterized by wooded grasslands derived from human-induced transformation of forests by tree clearing and tillage. One of the most common tree species of agro-silvo-pastoral systems in Sicily is cork oak (Quercus suber L.). According to the regional inventory these species cover 18830 ha (Camerano et al., 2011) from sea level up to 600 m a.s.l. in siliceous and volcanic substrates. Traditional management of cork oak forest is an example of integration of sustainable land use and biodiversity conservation. Cork oak woodlands are ecologically sensitive and maintained by active human management. Currently, this ecosystem in the Mediterranean Bas…

Incorporating stand level risk management options into forest decision support systems

2018

Aim of study:  To examine methods of incorporating risk and uncertainty to stand level forest decisions. Area of study: A case study examines a small forest holding from Jonkoping, Sweden. Material and methods: We incorporate empirically estimated uncertainty into the simulation through a Monte Carlo approach when simulating the forest stands for the next 100 years. For the iterations of the Monte Carlo approach, errors were incorporated into the input data which was simulated according to the Heureka decision support system. Both the Value at Risk and the Conditional Value at Risk of the net present value are evaluated for each simulated stand. Main results: Visual representation of the er…