Search results for "woody"
showing 10 items of 86 documents
The use of species in plantations: renaturalisation and reforestation in Sicily
2017
Afforestation and reforestation activities in Sicily have been widespread in the last century, in order to increase the forest cover that was seriously reduced in the former centuries. Notwithstanding this, Sicily is still characterized by only the 12% of the regional surface covered by woods and forest. The reforestation in the last century was carried out using conifers and eucalypts, just in order to ensure a quick protection of slopes and pastureland, coping diffuse erosion events, and those intervention had a remarkable success. Nowadays, the target of enlarging the forest areas in the island is still compulsive, but the use of species, considering the actual knowledge and nature consc…
ForBioEnergy - Forest Bioenergy in the Protected Mediterranean Areas
2019
The ForBioEnergy project, funded within the INTERREG MED Programme 2014-2020, involved a Lead Partner (Regional Department for the Rural and Territorial Development, Sicily Region), 8 project partners from 4 Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Croatia) and 4 Associate Partners from Italy (Ente Parco delle Madonie, AIEL, Enviland, Petralia Sottana) and Croatia. It is an innovative project which bets on the chance to favor the sustainable development of the rural areas through the exploitation of the forest biomass for the production of bioenergy. However, most of the Mediterranean forests are within protected areas, where the current regulatory restrictions and the lack of ma…
Notes on the status and the current spread of Viburnum tinus L. (Viburnaceae) in Sicily (Italy)
2021
The authors carried out a multi-disciplinary research in order to clarify the native status of Viburnum tinus in Sicily and update the knowledge about its current regional distribution. With this purpose, a large amount of scientific papers on forestry, botany and palaeo- and archaeobotany was consulted; more useful data issued from papers focused on local historical gardens, from archives and from herbarium specimens. The available data suggest that most of the extant nuclei may issue from the recent colonization of plants introduced just few centuries ago. Although the status of the stands found in some warm and humid sites in the surroundings of the city of Palermo and on the Sicani Moun…
ForBioEnergy - Forest Bioenergy in the Protected Mediterranean Areas
2018
ForBioEnergy project, funded in 2016 within the INTERREG MED Programme 2014 – 2020, involves a Lead Partner (Regional Department for the Rural and Territorial Development, Sicily Region), 8 project partners from 4 Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Croatia) and 4 Associate Partners from Italy (Ente Parco delle Madonie, AIEL) and Croatia. The other Italian partners are Enviland s.r.l. and the municipality of Petralia Sottana. ForBioEnergy is an innovative project which bets on the chance to favour the sustainable development of the rural areas through the exploitation of the forest biomass for the production of bioenergy. In Mediterranean contexts, however, most of the fores…
FTIR Monitoring of Chemical Changes in Softwood During Heating
2000
Abstract A multivariate chemometric method for monitoring the mass loss of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) and Norway spruce (Picea abies) by IR spectroscopic determination of chemical changes occurring during the heat treatment (160 - 260 °C, 2 - 8 h) of these wood materials was developed. The method was based on the handling of FTIR data on treated and untreated wood powder samples by the partial least squares (PLS) method. In addition, unknown samples (treated and untreated pine and spruce) were classified into separate groups by the principal component analysis (PCA) method. The chemical changes occurring in the wood samples during heating were also briefly discussed.
Carbon stock increases up to old growth forest along a secondary succession in Mediterranean island ecosystems.
2019
The occurrence of old-growth forests is quite limited in Mediterranean islands, which have been subject to particularly pronounced human impacts. Little is known about the carbon stocks of such peculiar ecosystems compared with different stages of secondary succession. We investigated the carbon variation in aboveground woody biomass, in litter and soil, and the nitrogen variation in litter and soil, in a 100 years long secondary succession in Mediterranean ecosystems. A vineyard, three stages of plant succession (high maquis, maquis-forest, and forest-maquis), and an old growth forest were compared. Soil samples at two soil depths (0-15 and 15-30 cm), and two litter types, relatively undec…
Impact of woody encroachment on soil organic carbon and nitrogen in abandoned agricultural lands along a rainfall gradient in Italy
2011
Land use changes represent one of the most important components of global environmental change andhave a strong influence on carbon cycling. As a consequence of changes in economy during the last century, areas of marginal agriculture have been abandoned leading to secondary successions. The encroachment of woody plants into grasslands, pastures and croplands is generally thought to increase the carbon stored in these ecosystems even though there are evidences for a decrease in soil carbon stocks after land use change. In this paper, we investigate the effects of woody plant invasion on soil carbon and nitrogen stocks along a precipitation gradient (200–2,500 mm) using original data from pa…
A tractor mounted scanning LIDAR for the non-destructive measurement of vegetative volume and surface area of tree-row plantations: A comparison with…
2009
The use of a low-cost tractor-mounted scanning Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system for capable of making non-destructive recordings of tree-row structure in orchards and vineyards is described. Field tests consisted of several LIDAR measurements on both sides of the crop row, before and after defoliation of selected trees. Summary parameters describing the tree-row volume and the total crop surface area viewed by the LIDAR (expressed as a ratio with ground surface area) were derived using a suitable numerical algorithm. The results for apple and pear orchards and a wine producing vineyard were shown to be in reasonable agreement with the results derived from a destructive leaf sampli…
What do we know about growth of vessel elements of secondary xylem in woody plants?
2021
Despite extensive knowledge about vessel element growth and the determination of the axial course of vessels, these processes are still not fully understood. They are usually explained as resulting primarily from hormonal regulation in stems. This review focuses on an increasingly discussed aspect - mechanical conditions in the vascular cambium. Mechanical conditions in cambial tissue are important for the growth of vessel elements, as well as other cambial derivatives. In relation to the type of stress acting on cambial cells (compressive versus tensile stress) we: (i) discuss the shape of the enlarging vessel elements observed in anatomical sections; (ii) present hypotheses regarding the …
Lifestyle dependent occurrence of airborne fungi
2018
Abstract. Fungi play important roles in the environment, agriculture, and human health. Most fungal species spread by wind-driven dispersal of spores, determining their occurrence and distribution in different environments. The dynamics of airborne fungi and their dependence on lifestyle and environmental conditions, however, are not well characterized. Here, we categorize the fungi detected in coarse and fine aerosol samples from continental boundary layer air using a lifestyle classification scheme that differentiates whether the fungi are (A) primarily associated to herbaceous or woody plants and (B), whether they are saprophytic, plant pathogenic, or surface inhabitants. Herbaceous fung…