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The Plan approved by the Council of Ministers of Italy on Jan 12, 2021 in Mission 2. "Green revolution and ecological transition", Project Line 2.4 "Territory and water resource protection", includes a specific intervention called "Forests and Protection" designated to mitigate the risks associated with hydrogeological instability, which does not provide for specific financial resources and refers to the EAFRD fund of the next programming period. In light of the actual hydrogeological emergencies of the country and the periodic announcements following each calamitous event, the choice made is incomprehensible. Not even the recent disaster that struck the forests in north-eastern Italy following the Vaia windstorm was an adequate warning to set aside for forests a two-hundredth of the funds in the PNRR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global changes push to set up strategies able to mitigate and adapt agricultural and forest crops to environmental variability, and the sustainable intensification of production processes under agricultural and forestry systems is one of the approaches mainly supported. In Italy biomass and biogas are the renewable energy sources that have shown the greatest potential for growth in recent years. In this context, during the XV National Congress held in Bolzano in February 2018, the Italian Association of Agricultural Scientific Societies has promoted an analysis about potentialities and limits of the sustainable intensification of agricultural and forestry systems for bioenergy production. This document reports the outcome, in the form of a commented discussion, on the main evidences and proposals from technical-scientific and operational points of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last century, afforestation programmes were planned in most of the Italian regions and black pine plantations have represented one of the main public policy effort in mountain areas. The afforestation tecniques has been generally similar throughout Italy, producing nowadays artificial back pine forests showing similar age and structures. Nevertheless, contrasting forestry legislations and decision making both theoretically and technically are adopted at regional scale specifically on black pine forest management. Because of these heterogeneity of laws and regulation, a reference knowledge base can standardise and harmonise the different terms and technical-management aspects often involved in the forestry sector. The aim of this work is to provide a legislative history concerning afforestation at the National level, with a synoptic framework of the current regional forest legislation on the treatment of black pine forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human activities have the potential to enhance carbon sequestration by the world's forests and contribute to climate change mitigation. Voluntary carbon trading is currently the only option to pursue and reward carbon sequestration by forestry activities. Carbon credits for enhanced sequestration can be sold to partners wishing to offset their own emissions. Here we illustrate the steps taken to design guidelines for the generation of voluntary carbon credits by improved forest management in Piemonte, Italy. The guidelines have been developed in a joint effort by academia, regional administrations, forest owners and professional consultants. In particular, we show how to compute the baseline and the additionality of credit-generating forest management activities, and how to reconcile the generation of forest carbon credits with law requirements, technical limitations, and the provision of other ecosystem services. To illustrate the profitability of carbon credit generation, we simulated the application of carbon credit guidelines to two forest-rich mountain watersheds in the southern part of the Piemonte region. The two dominating tree species are beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.). We computed current forest carbon stock and carbon credits generated in 20 years under business as usual and an alternative biomass retention scenario. The IFM resulted in an avoided harvest of 39,362 m³ for a net total of 64,014 MgCO2e after subtracting harvest emissions, or 38 Mg ha-1 throughout the permanence period of 20 years. These steps can be replicated in other mountain regions where there is interest in promoting this ecosystem service as an alternative or an addition to production-oriented forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]