A Composite Index to Measure the Italian "Enological Vocation"

Abstract The Italian wine industry is going through, during a general economic crisis, a period of strong growth and expansion in the world markets. The quality of products, characterized by tradition and innovation, has defeated the involution of the Italian entrepreneurial system. The variety of wines produced represents the peculiarities of the Italian territory. The aim of this paper is to measure a multidimensional phenomenon, the "Enological vocation" of the Italian provinces, through the use of a composite index. The results highlight both areas of the territory for which it is known the strong vocation and less known areas where you need to do further investigation

Quantifying and resolving conservation conflicts in forest landscapes via multiobjective optimization

Environmental planning for of the maintenance of different conservation objectives should take into account multiple contrasting criteria based on alternative uses of the landscape. We develop new concepts and approaches to describe and measure conflicts among conservation objectives and for resolving them via multiobjective optimization. To measure conflicts we introduce a compatibility index that quantifies how much targeting a certain conservation objective affects the capacity of the landscape for providing another objective. To resolve such conflicts we find compromise solutions defined in terms of minimax regret, i.e. minimizing the maximum percentage of deterioration among conservation objectives. Finally, we apply our approach for a case study of management for biodiversity conservation and development in a forest landscape. We study conflicts between six different forest species, and we identify management solutions for simultaneously maintaining multiple species’ habitat while obtaining timber harvest revenues. We employ the method for resolving conflicts at a large landscape level across a long 50-years forest planning horizon. Our multiobjective approach can be an instrument for guiding hard choices in the conservation-development nexus with a perspective of developing decision support tools for land use planning. In our case study multiple use management and careful landscape level planning using our approach can reduce conflicts among biodiversity objectives and offer room for synergies in forest ecosystems.peerReviewe

Dataset on species incidence, species richness and forest characteristics in a Danish protected area

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Restoring hydrology and old-growth structures in a former production forest: Modelling the long-term effects on biodiversity” (A. Mazziotta, J. Heilmann-Clausen, H. H.Bruun, Ö. Fritz, E. Aude, A.P. Tøttrup) [1]. This article describes how the changes induced by restoration actions in forest hydrology and structure alter the biodiversity value of a Danish forest reserve. The field dataset is made publicly available to enable critical or extended analyses

More future synergies and less trade-offs between forest ecosystem services with natural climate solutions instead of bioeconomy solutions

To reach the Paris Agreement, societies need to increase the global terrestrial carbon sink. There are many climate change mitigation solutions (CCMS) for forests, including increasing bioenergy, bioeconomy, and protection. Bioenergy and bioeconomy solutions use climate-smart, intensive management to generate high quantities of bioenergy and bioproducts. Protection of (semi-)natural forests is a major component of "natural climate solution" (NCS) since forests store carbon in standing biomass and soil. Furthermore, protected forests provide more habitat for biodiversity and non-wood ecosystem services (ES). We investigated the impacts of different CCMS and climate scenarios, jointly or in isolation, on future wood ES, non-wood ES, and regulating ES for a major wood provider for the international market. Specifically, we projected future ES given by three CCMS scenarios for Sweden 2020-2100. In the long term, fulfilling the increasing wood demand through bioenergy and bioeconomy solutions will decrease ES multifunctionality, but the increased stand age and wood stocks induced by rising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations will partially offset these negative effects. Adopting bioenergy and bioeconomy solutions will have a greater negative impact on ES supply than adopting NCS. Bioenergy or bioeconomy solutions, as well as increasing GHG emissions, will reduce synergies and increase trade-offs in ES. NCS, by contrast, increases the supply of multiple ES in synergy, even transforming current ES trade-offs into future synergies. Moreover, NCS can be considered an adaptation measure to offset negative climate change effects on the future supplies of non-wood ES. In boreal countries around the world, forestry strategies that integrate NCS more deeply are crucial to ensure a synergistic supply of multiple ES

La sintesi di indicatori territoriali di dotazione infrastrutturale: metodi di costruzione e procedure di ponderazione a confronto

Il tema della sintesi di diversi indicatori in un indicatore rappresentativo dell’insieme dei fenomeni considerati è un tema ben noto in letteratura, soprattutto nel campo delle statistiche sociali. Spesso, tuttavia, la sintesi viene effettuata senza l’introduzione di alcuna ponderazione, dunque assumendo implicitamente che i diversi fenomeni considerati abbiano tutti lo stesso rilievo e possano quindi “entrare” nel procedimento di sintesi in termini paritetici. Questa assunzione, pur comprensibile per la difficoltà di evitare il rischio dell’arbitrarietà, potrebbe tuttavia condurre a risultati distorti, o quanto meno non completamente affidabili, dato che nella realtà difficilmente i fenomeni da sintetizzare possono essere posti su un livello paritetico. La questione, peraltro, si complica quando si è in presenza di una doppia dimensione da sintetizzare: quella settoriale (nel lavoro qui presentato, le diverse categorie infrastrutturali) e quella territoriale (qui, le province italiane). Al problema  in particolare, a quello della costruzione di un indicatore di sintesi della dotazione infrastrutturale a livello di diverse unità territoriali  sono state date soluzioni diverse, tutte più o meno basate sulla variabilità, settoriale e/o territoriale, quale elemento da assumere per la determinazione dei pesi da introdurre eventualmente nell’algoritmo di sintesi. Il lavoro che qui si presenta si pone l’obiettivo di mettere a confronto alcuni degli approcci a tal fine utilizzati e di verificare sia l’eventuale convergenza sia il grado di robustezza (e dunque di affidabilità) dei risultati ottenuti.The synthesis of different indicators expressed in only one representative measure of a set of phenomena is a subject known in literature, especially in the social statistics. Frequently the synthesis is calculated without weighting, or rather it is assumed, implicitly, that the phenomena considered have the same importance and they can be considered on the same level. This assumption reduces the risk of the arbitrariness but it could lead biased, or not completely reliable, results. However the issue is more complicated when there are two dimensions to summarize: the sectorial dimension (in this paper, the different infrastructural categories) and the territorial dimension (the Italian provinces). The problem  in particular, computing composite indicators of infrastructural endowment  is dealt with different approaches based on the sectorial and territorial variability in order to determine the weights for a set of elementary indicators. The aim of this paper is to compare some approaches, to verify the convergence and the robustness (reliability) of the results obtained