A forest typology for monitoring sustainable forest management: The case of European Forest Types

Sustainable forest management (SFM) is presently widely accepted as the overriding objective for forest policy and practice. Regional processes are in progress all over the world to develop and implement criteria and indicators of SFM. In continental Europe, a set of 35 Pan-European indicators has been endorsed under the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) to measure progress towards SFM in the 44 countries of the region. The formulation of seven indicators (forest area, growing stock, age structure/diameter distribution, deadwood, tree species composition, damaging agents, naturalness) requires national data to be reported by forest types. Within the vast European forest area the values taken by these indicators show a considerable range of variation, due to variable natural conditions and anthropogenic influences. Given this variability, it is very difficult to grasp the meaning of these indicators when taken out of their ecological background. The paper discusses the concepts behind, and the requirements of, a classification more soundly ecologically framed and suitable for MCPFE reporting than the three (un-informative) classes adopted so far: broadleaved forest, coniferous forest, mixed broadleaved and coniferous forest. We propose a European Forest Types scheme structured into a reasonably higher number of classes, that would improve the specificity of the indicators reported under the MCPFE process and its understanding.L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore www.tandf.co.uk/journals

Armonizzazione degli inventari forestali per il monitoraggio della biodiversità

Gli approcci selvicolturali orientati alla gestione sostenibile delle risorse forestali richiedono la disponibilità di informazioni di supporto qualitativamente e quantitativamente superiori rispetto a quelle richieste da un approccio più tradizionale finalizzato alla massimizzazione della produzione legnosa. Negli ultimi anni la selvicoltura si è evoluta proponendo nuovi approcci orientati alla ottimizzazione delle funzionalità biologiche del sistema bosco. Parallelamente vari processi internazionali a livello Europeo (Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe, Streamlining Biodiversity Indicators by 2010) e globale (Montreal Process, Protocollo di Kyoto) richiedono la quantificazione di numerosi indicatori attraverso i quali valutare il livello di sostenibilità della gestione forestale e il valore ecologico degli ecosistemi forestali. L’ampliata domanda di informazioni su aspetti ecologici e ambientali delle foreste richiede un adattamento dei protocolli di rilevamento inventariale che ne costituiscono la principale fonte informativa. Il presente contributo è basato sui primi risultati dell’azione COST E43 “Harmonisation of National forest inventories in Europe: techniques for common reporting” Working Group 3 che è impegnato nella valutazione della capacità di reporting armonizzato del livello di biodiversità degli ecosistemi forestali da parte degli inventari forestali nazionali. Dall’analisi dei metodi, delle definizioni e dei protocolli adottati da 27 Paesi è possibile dedurre l’attuale capacità degli inventari forestali per la derivazione di un gruppo di indicatori della biodiversità forestale organizzati in sette aree tematiche (core variables): tipologie forestali, legno morto, diversità compositiva e strutturale, età, naturalità, vegetazione non forestale, rinnovazione. Sulla base delle analisi realizzate nell’azione COST E43 viene qui presentato l’inquadramento metodologico delle procedure di armonizzazione e la loro possibile applicazione finalizzata alla derivazione di indicatori di biodiversità forestale

Beware of contagion!

Landscape ecology starts from the assumption that diversity and spatial arrangement of ecosystem mosaics has ecological implications and tries to understand the interactions between diversity and structure of large spatially heterogeneous areas and its ecological functions. This approach implies effective use of earth observation techniques and geographic information systems, enabling a global view of the landscape mosaics. Consequently, a large number of indices has been used to quantify the structure of categorical maps as a surrogate of actual landscapes and correlate them to ecological processes. In particular, the entropy-based contagion index has been extensively used to summarize the amount of clumping or fragmentation of patches on raster categorical maps. However, despite its widespread application, the contagion index is very dependent on pixel resolution. This effect may render it inadequate as a meaningful measure of landscape structure. To overcome this major shortcoming, in this short note we propose to quantify pixel adjacency with a bivariate summary statistics that is not adversely influenced by pixel resolution.L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore www.elsevier.co

European forest types and forest Europe SFM indicators: tools for monitoring progress on forest biodiversity conservation

Since 2003 the MCPFE-Forest Europe process has adopted a set of Pan-European Indicators that has become a policy instrument to monitor, evaluate and report progress towards sustainable forest management (SFM). Two new experimental tools have been introduced in the framework of the «State of Forests and Sustainable Forest Management in Europe 2011»: (i) pilot reporting by 14 classes of European Forest Types (EFTs) for a selection of quantitative SFM indicators; (ii) key parameters for monitoring progress for all quantitative indicators. The main aim of this paper is to discuss whether reporting by EFTs of key forest biodiversity-related parameters can improve the way forest biodiversity conservation policy targets are addressed and evaluated in Europe. Accordingly, data on SFM indicators for a sample of European countries (ranging from 6 to 28, depending on indicators) have been processed and analyzed in a pilot study using a question-driven approach, so that information from monitoring could direct policy action. The main findings show that: – forest area has been significantly increasing (>0.2% per year) in the period 2000–2010; however, annual changes in forest cover by EFTs reveal a polyedric picture at country level, in terms of gain and loss of forest habitat dominated by native and introduced tree species; – old even aged forests (>140 yrs) are fairly consistent (>5%) only in a few countries and limited to specific EFTs; – in naturally species-poor EFTs (e.g. Boreal forest, Alpine coniferous forest, Broadleaved evergreen forest) single species stands cover from 15–100% of the total area, while in species rich EFTs (e.g. Mesophytic deciduous forest, Thermophilous deciduous forest) the maximum share of single species is in the order of 30%; – deadwood amount ranges from 9 to 26 m3 ha 1, a value which is however far below natural reference values found in European old growth forests (160 m3 ha 1). Findings from this test demonstrate that reporting of key forest biodiversity-related parameters by EFTs enables question-driven monitoring in many ways: (i) reporting by EFTs helps to interpret the variability in the values taken by the indicators explicitly considering ecological differences between EFTs; (ii) temporal trends in forest area can be interpreted in terms of expansion or loss of forest habitats dominated by native and introduced tree species; (iii) progress in implementing biodiversity friendly strategies (e.g. increasing share of old even aged forests, promotion of multispecies stands and accumulation of deadwood) can be quantitatively evaluated against baselines.L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore http://www.sciencedirect.co

Cambiamenti di copertura forestale e dell’uso del suolo nell’inventario dell’uso delle terre in Italia

Changes of forest coverage and land uses as assessed by the inventory of land uses in Italy. The paper presents the IUTI program, a land use inventory of Italy, based on point sampling. It has been carried out to support the National Carbon Sink Accounting Register and it was realized within the framework of the Italian National Remote Sensing Plan managed by the Italian Ministry of Environment. IUTI has monitored the land use and land use change and forestry in the last two decades over the country at the years 1990, 2000, 2008, adopting a tessellated stratified sampling scheme with about 1.2 million sample points on aerial orthophotos. Following definitions, methods and inventory procedures, the main results are discussed. They show the heavy changes affecting surface and distribution of the various classes for arable lands, forests and urban areas.L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore www.sisef.i

Investigation on Modulation-Based Straightness Measurement

The concept of a novel non-contacting technique for measuring straightness and its practical realization in a mechanical device are presented in this article. The device, called InPlanT, is based on the acquisition of the luminous signal retroreflected by a spherical glass target and impinged on a photodiode after mechanical modulation. The received signal is reduced to the sought straightness profile using dedicated software. The system was characterized with a high-accuracy CMM and the maximum error of indication was derived