‘Nothing will ever be the same again’. Personal commitment and political subjectivation in the 20 February Movement in Morocco

Based on an analysis of the stories of engagement of young activists who took part in the 20 February Movement in Morocco, this contribution explores the process of individual transformation that occurred during the experience of activism. We use the concept of political subjectivation to discuss the succession of moments of rupture and re-semanticisation, the new ethical configurations generated by the experience of activism and their long-term consequences. This contribution is part of an ethnographic study that has accompanied the evolution of the protests from 2011, carried out by the two authors first independently and, from 2017, within the framework of the ‘Globally Sensitive: Revolt, Citizenship, and Expectations for the Future in North Africa’ project

Development of old-growth characteristics in uneven-aged forests of the Italian Alps

During the last millennia, all forests of the Italian Alps have been heavily affected by human land-use. Consequently, forest structures have been modified, and there are no old growth remains. In the last decades, however, many forests have been withdrawn from regular management, because wood production was unprofitable, and left to develop naturally. At the same time, in currently managed forests, silvicultural systems able to develop or maintain old-growth characteristics are being required. The aim of this paper was to assess the status and developmental dynamics of old-growth characteristics in mixed beech, silver fir, and Norway spruce montane forests of the eastern Italian Alps. We selected along a naturalness gradient (a) three old-growth forests in Bosnia and Montenegro (due to the lack of old-growth forests in the Italian Alps), (b) two forests withdrawn from regular management for at least 50 years, and (c) three currently managed forests. In each forest, we analysed 17 structural attributes, in order to assess their value as indicators of old-growth condition. Old-growth forests were characterized by significantly higher amounts of live and dead biomass, share of beech in the dominant and regeneration layers, and number of large trees. The diameter distribution was best described as a rotated sigmoid, differently from currently and formerly managed forest. We discuss the differences in old-growth characteristics across the management gradient and use our results to evaluate the effectiveness of retention prescriptions currently applied in the studied regions in maintaining or promoting old-growth structural attributes in managed forests

Effects of twenty years of ungulate browsing on forest regeneration at Paneveggio Reserve, Italy

Forest ecosystems are threatened by different natural disturbances. Among them, the irruption of large herbivores represents one of the most alarming issues. Several local-scale studies have been carried out to clarify the mechanisms governing ungulate\u2013forest interactions, to understand the effect of wild ungulates overabundance, and to apply conservation plans. However, information at large scales, over long periods of observation and from unmanipulated conditions is still scarce. This study aims to improve our knowledge in this field by using repeated inventories to investigate: the types of damage produced by ungulate populations on young trees, the drivers that stimulate browsing activity and its consequences on the specific composition of seedlings and saplings. To reach these goals, we used data collected during a twenty-year monitoring program (1994\u20132014) in the forests of Paneveggio-Pale di San Martino Nature Park (Italy). We applied descriptive statistics to summarize the data, GLMs to identify the drivers of browsing activity and Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (nMDS) ordinations to investigate the changes in specific composition of young trees across 20 years. We detected increasing browsing activity from 1994 to 2008 and a decline in 2014. Ungulates browsed preferentially in mature stands, and fed mostly on seedlings and saplings under 150 cm of height. The analysis of the environmental drivers of browsing pressure on the smallest size classes of plants suggests that foraging behavior is influenced by snowpack conditions, ungulate density and seasonality. Moreover, results underline the fact that ungulates feed mostly on palatable species, especially European rowan, but can also use unpalatable plants as emergency food under high competition levels. nMDS results suggest that rowan seed dispersion might be promoted by deer movements, however, saplings of this species were not able to exceed 30 cm of height because of heavy browsing. This bottleneck effect led to the dominance of unpalatable species, mostly Norway spruce, reducing diversity during forest regeneration. If prolonged, this effect could lead to a reduction of tree species richness, with cascading effects on many parts of the ecosystem, and threatening the resilience of the forest to future disturbances

Assessing the effect of disturbances on the functionality of direct protection forests

Forests provide direct protection to human settlements from hydrogeomorphic hazards. This paper proposes a method for assessing the effect of natural disturbances on the functionality of direct protection forests (DPFs) in order to prioritize management interventions. We georeferenced disturbance data for wildfires, wind and snow damage, avalanches, and insects and overlaid them to a region-wide DPF map. Within each disturbance polygon, we used a Landsat-5 TM image to identify DPFs with insufficient vegetation cover, by using a maximum likelihood classifier of 6 spectral bands plus 5 vegetation indices. For each disturbance agent, we fitted a generalized linear model of the probability of finding a forested pixel, as a function of topography, time since disturbance, distance from disturbance edge, summer precipitation, and drought in the disturbance year. DPFs covered almost half of total forest area in the study region. Disturbance by insects occurred in more than one sixth of all forests. Avalanche and wildfire occurred each in about one tenth of total forest area, and wind and snow disturbance in only 1%. In the last 50 years, disturbances had a recurrence rate of 3% every 10 years. Almost one sixth of DPFs are currently lacking sufficient forest cover. Wildfires resulted in the highest rate of nonforested pixels (42% of all DPFs), followed by avalanches (21%). Forest recovery was explained by time elapsed, distance from edge (for conifers), and aspect. Summer precipitation and drought had a mixed influence. Our approach to assessing the effect of disturbances on the functionality of DPFs is reproducible in all mountain regions using institutional or open-access geographic data and provides a tool to prioritize DPF management by indicating where restoration of protection is most urgent