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The forestry sector in Italy is facing issues related to the need to make the most of environmental, territorial and socio-economic opportunities. The research is called upon to translate technological advances into practical applications, even in the field of geomatics and information and communication technologies. The exploitation of precision technologies can foster innovation and the improvement of management processes as well as the development of new products useful for forest owners, entrepreneurs, forest technicians and citizens, with benefits for the quality of forest production, the reduction of production costs and the reduction of environmental and social impacts. This note provides a brief overview of precision technologies applied to forest farm-scale monitoring, silviculture management, logging, poplar farming, forest nursery and forest product traceability.

This technical note describes a quick methodology to classify the phytodepurative potential of riparian forest stands. Some municipalities located within landscapes characterized by both intensive agricultural and industrial activities in Central Italy are considered as test areas. Starting from the on-screen interpretation of high-resolution digital aerial orthophotos, supported by accurate ground surveys and GIS operations, it has been possible to map the riparian forest stands and classify each of them based on factors representing their phytodepurative potential. The proposed mapping process, feasible and easily replicable, provides a support tool for analysis and planning related to phytoremediation and/or to identify conservation and environmental management priorities and, depending on the goals of the phytoremediation objectives, to define where to locate eventual specific technical interventions.

Coppice silviculture: are laws and regulations in line with current conditions in Italy? Despite a less intensive management in the recent decades, coppices still cover a large part of Italian woodlands. Currently, they are characterized by relatively large wood volumes, especially with respect of those stands classified as “aged”. The current European and national strategies to reduce the use of fossil fuels and the related increasing demand of renewable bio-energy sources are giving a new boost to the coppice system, so that the need for an improved management of these stands is emerging. Under this perspective, this note highlights the opportunity for an overall revision of current forest laws and regulations at regional level in Italy, in order to embed recent scientific achievements and harmonize some aspects such as definitions, rotation, conversion to high stands, standards, cut size and administrative procedures.

Estimation and mapping of forest attributes are a fundamental support for forest management planning. This study describes a practical experimentation concerning the use of design-based k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) approach to estimate and map selected attributes in the framework of inventories at forest management level. The study area was the Chiarino forest within the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park (central Italy). Aboveground biomass and current annual increment of tree volume were selected as the attributes of interest for the test. Field data were acquired within 28 sample plots selected by stratified random sampling. Satellite data were acquired by a Landsat 5 TM multispectral image. Attributes from field surveys and Landsat image processing were coupled by k-NN to predict the attributes of interest for each pixel of the Landsat image. Achieved results demonstrate the effectiveness of the k-NN approach for statistical estimation, that is compatible with the produced forest attribute raster maps and also proves to be characterized, in the considered study case, by a precision double than that obtained by conventional inventory based on field sample plots only.

Chestnut stands are among the main forest formations in Italy. The aim of this work is to assess the floristic diversity of chestnut coppice stands of Sabatini Mts. (central Italy), highlighting the relationships between the silvicultural system and the ecological processes. In the management of these coppices almost exclusive importance has been given to the wood production, rating the stands on the basis of the rotation that maximizes the production of the most valuable assortments. The assessment carried out is based on floristic and dendrometric surveys within permanent circular plots (10 meters radius) randomly selected within three chronological strata. Surveys have been realized on a total of 15 plots, 5 for each stratum. Indices of floristic richness and diversity have been elaborated to point out variations of forest types and to suggest possible alternatives to the current management to mitigate its impact on biodiversity.

The aim of this work is to test the potential of SPOT5 satellite images for monitoring coppice clearcuts. The clearcuts, delineated by on screen interpretation of the satellite images, are compared with the administrative statistics reported for a sample of 230 administrative units. Administrative statistics result significantly lower than those by satellite images, with an average ratio between clearcut area observed by SPOT5 images within each sample unit and the corresponding administrative statistics equal to 1.45. The underestimation by the administrative data is likely due to the simplified process of authorization of coppice clearcuts as well as the eventual lack of timeliness and/or loss of data that sometimes hinder the information flow from administrative bodies to National Forest Service, that is in charge of feeding the official forest statistics. In the light of the experimentation carried out, an operational procedure by SPOT5 images is proposed for the statistical calibration of administrative data about coppice clearcuts.

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 relationships between floristic data and stand structural attributes. The achieved results suggest alternative suitable options for managing chestnut coppice stands in order to enhance biodiversity while maintaining wood production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Converting beech coppices into high forest stands has been promoted in the last decades as a management goal to attenuate the negative effects that frequent clearcutting may have on soil, landscape, and biodiversity conservation. The silvicultural tool usually adopted is the gradual thinning of shoots during the long span of time required to complete the conversion, that also allows the owner to keep harvesting some wood. This research reports and discusses, in the light of the ecological intensification approach, the results achieved from an experimental test started more than 25 years ago in a 42-year-old beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) coppice with standards in central Italy. The effects of various thinning intensities (three treatments plus a control) on the stand growth and structure are assessed by successive forest inventories. Analyses are integrated by spatial indices to assess stem density and canopy cover. Converting beech coppices into high forest through gradual thinning of shoots proves to be an effective step down the road to silvicultural systems characterized by continuous forest cover, as a tool of ecological intensification suitable to guarantee both public and private interests. Thinning has led to stands with fewer but larger stems, thus accelerating the long conversion process while maintaining both wood harvesting capability and environmental services.

Urban areas are continuously expanding today, extending their influence on an increasingly large proportion of woods and trees located in or nearby urban and urbanizing areas, the so-called urban forests. Although these forests have the potential for significantly improving the quality the urban environment and the well-being of the urban population, data to quantify the extent and characteristics of urban forests are still lacking or fragmentary on a large scale. In this regard, an expansion of the domain of multipurpose forest inventories like National Forest Inventories (NFIs) towards urban forests would be required. To this end, it would be convenient to exploit the same sampling scheme applied in NFIs to assess the basic features of urban forests. This paper considers approximately unbiased estimators of abundance and coverage of urban forests, together with estimators of the corresponding variances, which can be achieved from the first phase of most large-scale forest inventories. A simulation study is carried out in order to check the performance of the considered estimators under various situations involving the spatial distribution of the urban forests over the study area. An application is worked out on the data from the Italian NFI.