La pianificazione forestale in Sicilia: storia e recenti evoluzioni

In Sicilia la pianificazione forestale ha avuto di recente una svolta resasi necessaria sia per motivi richiesti dall’autorità europea e da quella nazionale, sia per un’oggettiva necessità del territorio. Dal punto di vista normativo la storia degli ultimi decenni ha visto la Sicilia dotarsi di norme e giuridicamente all’avanguardia e lungimiranti dal punto di vista della conservazione del patrimonio naturale. Si fa infatti riferimento ai piani di assestamento forestale per la gestione del patrimonio boschivo isolano dalle leggi regionali del 1989, del 1996, del 2004 con l’emanazione di linee guida regionali e della LR 14/2006. Quest’ultima in particolare richiamava anche alla necessità di predisporre “…il piano forestale regionale sulla base degli elementi di conoscenza desumibili dall’inventario forestale regionale e della carta forestale regionale», e introduceva, a livello aziendale, il concetto di piano di gestione forestale sostenibile. A tutt’oggi le normative in materia di pianificazione aziendale infatti sono state disattese: sono pochissime le aree forestali siciliane in cui è stato redatto un piano di gestione, per quanto riguarda le proprietà pubbliche che costituiscono la parte più rilevante del patrimonio forestale siciliano. Per quanto riguarda la pianificazione a livello regionale, la travagliata redazione del primo piano forestale regionale è terminata nel 2010, priva del supporto dell’inventario e della carta, redatte in seguito per motivi contingenti. Il primo PFR è risultato un documento di ampio respiro, con una descrizione del territorio nei suoi vari aspetti, e degli strumenti tecnici e finanziari. Tuttavia l’analisi sia pur dettagliata si basava su elementi in parte datati e in parte di non sufficiente dettaglio, proprio per le carenze informative illustrate. Gli obiettivi ed attuazione del Piano erano peraltro chiari e ben articolati, mirati soprattutto all’aumento della superficie forestale e alla corretta gestione di essa attraverso piani di gestione aziendali, proponendo anche esempi di pianificazione a livello territoriale. Dotato di un rapporto ambientale condiviso e di documenti d’indirizzo pratici operativi, fu redatto per il periodo programmatorio 2009-2013. Già in fase di approvazione della VAS si sottolineò peraltro la necessità di un aggiornamento sulla base dell’inventario forestale e della carta forestale regionale che nel frattempo avevano visto la luce. Infatti emergevano i limiti sia legati alle carenze della descrizione delle risorse forestali del territorio regionale, che comunque è piuttosto approssimativa poiché basata sull’INFC – quindi con dettaglio insufficiente, sia alla mancanza di strumenti esecutivi per una chiara impostazione riguardo la pianificazione e all’assestamento. La mancanza degli strumenti sopracitati non ha consentito la definizione di interventi specifici per il patrimonio forestale siciliano. La regione ha predisposto una proposta di aggiornamento del PFR con significative innovazioni. La parte conoscitiva è stata aggiornata sulla scorta del nuovo sistema informativo al dettaglio regionale, e soprattutto dell’adozione del sistema tipologico forestale. Sulla base di quest’ultimo per ogni tipo sono state redatte linee guida per la gestione colturale specifica delle formazioni dell’isola, con dettaglio per i boschi di maggior importanza ecologica e produttiva. Nell’aggiornamento del Piano Forestale Regionale, in particolare per la redazione delle linee guida di gestione a livello di tipo forestale, si è tenuto conto dei risultati acquisiti con il progetto Life 11+ RESILFORMED- RESILienza al cambiamento climatico delle FOReste MEDiterranee, (2012 – 2017) volto a trovare le migliori risoluzioni tecniche per aumentare la resilienza dei sistemi forestali al cambiamento climatico in corso in area mediterranea. Un obiettivo perseguito nella proposta di aggiornamento del PFR è l’incentivazione della pianificazione forestale, oggi ancora molto carente, a livello sovraziendale/territoriale e aziendale. Un processo volto a definire una pianificazione su più livelli coerenti ed interagenti tra loro. I Piani di Indirizzo Territoriale redatti per ambiti forestali omogenei in termini di indirizzi gestionali possono contribuire a una visione integrata delle opportunità del territorio, mentre a livello aziendale il piano di Gestione Forestale realizza gli indirizzi di gestione sostenibile volti a favorire le attitudini multifunzionali del bosco. A completamento del PFR occorre ancora una nuova definizione di alcuni strumenti cartografici fondamentali: la Carta delle Aree Ecologicamente Omogenee e la carta delle Priorità d’Intervento. Questi due strumenti, già prodotti nella precedente versione, devono esser aggiornati tenendo conto di nuove basi informative, quali la carta forestale (in luogo della precedente classificazione Corine su cui era basata la Carta delle Aree a Priorità d’Intervento) e altri fondamentali, come ad esempio la nuova carta geolitologica, le carte IV Congresso Nazionale di Selvicoltura - Torino, 5-9 Novembre 2018 Il bosco: bene indispensabile per un presente vivibile e un futuro possibile 237 dei piani stralcio di bacino idrografico, entrambe in scala 1:10.000 e la nuova edizione della carta della sensibilità alla desertificazione. A corollario dell’iter di aggiornamento del PFR ancora in corso è comunque stato emesso il Decreto Assessoriale n° 85 del 14/12/2016 rafforza l’importanza della pianificazione a livello aziendale definendo linee guida dettagliate per la redazione dei piani, di cui si definiscono metodi e tecniche esecutive.In Sicily, forest planning has recently had a significant evolution, required both for reasons requested by the European and national authorities, and for an objective necessity of the territory. From a regulatory point of view, the history of the last decades has seen Sicily adopt laws and juridically avant-garde and far-sighted from the point of view of the conservation of the natural heritage. In fact, reference is made to forest management plans for the management of the island's forest heritage from the regional laws of 1989, 1996 and 2004 with the issue of regional guidelines and of Regional Law 14/2006. The latter in particular referred to the need to prepare "... the regional forestry plan on the basis of the elements of knowledge inferable from the regional forest inventory and the regional forest map", and introduced, at company level, the concept of a sustainable forest management plan. The troubled drafting of the first regional forest plan was completed in 2010, without the support of the inventory and the forest map, drafted later for contingent reasons. The first PFR was a wide-ranging document, with a description of the territory in its various aspects, and technical and financial instruments. However, the analysis, although detailed, was based on elements that were partly dated and partly insufficiently detailed, due to the shortcomings illustrated. The objectives and implementation of the Plan were also clear and well-articulated, aimed above all at the increase of the forest area and the correct management of it through company management plans, also proposing examples of planning at the territorial level. Equipped with a shared environmental report and practical operational guidance documents, it was drafted for the 2009-2013 program period. The approval of the SEA also underlined the need for an update on the basis of the forest inventory and the regional forest map which in the meantime had seen the light. In fact emerged the limits related to the shortcomings of the description of the forest resources of the regional territory, which is rather approximate because it is based on the INFC - 2005 therefore with insufficient detail, both the lack of executive tools for a clear planning and settling approach. The lack of the aforementioned tools did not allow the definition of specific interventions for the Sicilian forest heritage. To date, the planning regulations have been disregarded: there are very few Sicilian forest areas in which a management plan has been drawn up, regarding the public properties that make up the most important part of the Sicilian forest heritage. The region has prepared a proposal to update the PFR with significant innovations. The knowledge part was updated on the basis of the new regional forest information system, and above all the adoption of the forest typological system. On the basis of the latter, for each type, guidelines have been drawn up for the specific crop management of the island's formations, with details for the forests of greater ecological and productive importance. In the update of the Regional Forestry Plan, in particular for the drafting of the management guidelines at forest level level, the results obtained with the project Life 11+ RESILFORMED- RESILIENCE to climate change of the MEDiterranean FORestry have been taken into account, (2012 - 2017) for finding the best technical resolutions to increase the resilience of forest systems to climate change in progress in the Mediterranean area. The proposal hs also pursued the updating of the RFP in fostering forest planning, which is still very lacking today, at a territorial and local level. A process aimed at defining a plan on several levels that are coherent and interacting with each other. The Territorial Guidelines drawn up for homogeneous forest areas in terms of management guidelines can contribute to an integrated vision of the territory's opportunities, while at the local level the Forest Management Plan implements sustainable management guidelines aimed at favoring multifunctional forest attitudes. To complete the FRP, a new definition of some fundamental cartographic tools is still needed: the Charter of Ecologically Homogeneous Areas and the Priority Charter. These two tools, already produced in the previous version, must be updated taking into account new information bases, such as the forest map (in place of the IV Congresso Nazionale di Selvicoltura - Torino, 5-9 Novembre 2018 Il bosco: bene indispensabile per un presente vivibile e un futuro possibile 238 previous Corine classification on which the Priority Areas Map was based) and other fundamental, such as for example, the new geolithological map, the maps of the drainage plans, both in scale 1: 10,000 and the new edition of the map of sensitivity to desertification. As a corollary of the update of the plan, the Assessment Decree No. 85 of 14/12/2016 reinforces the importance of planning at the local level by defining detailed guidelines for the preparation of plans, which are defined as executive methods and techniques

Axiomatic Design for an Efficient Development of Optimized RPM Systems

New communication technologies and development of increasingly advanced systems for remote assistance create important opportunities related to the spread of e-health systems and devices for health monitoring and healthcare integration. Despite the increasingly widespread use of Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) systems, especially in presence of chronic diseases, users’ needs and requests are often disregarded due to poor customization of solutions. This is mainly due to the lack of truly interoperable tools allowing for horizontal integration between the various medical and specialized instruments. The proposed model works as a useful approach to ensure that the development of new solutions shall be partially guaranteed. The Axiomatic Design method is a suitable tool to identify the best solutions to meet users’ needs

A novel approach for axiomatic-based design for the environment

The Eco-design approach for new product development is becoming progressively more and more important for competitive and legislative reasons, especially in advanced markets (EU USA, East Asia, etc.). Its importance is increasingly growing since the decisions made in early design stages largely affect not only the cost but also the environmental impact of a product. This paper introduces a novel approach that could be used to increase the potential capability of an Eco-design approach. This aim is achieved through a better fit between the critical environmental issues and the development of new solutions using AD. The introduced approach, first, considers a meta-product point of view that uses a customized Smart Eco-design Platform and the Axiomatic Design (AD) for the improvement of the eco-sustainability of products. Then, the approach introduces the meta-system level as the reference level for detecting the system Design Matrix and developing an uncoupled design. This goal could be achieved through the use of AD and the implementation of the environmental information as a tool to reduce the space of the available design solutions. The first axiom aims to define the Design Matrix of the Functional System in order to detect its best configuration. The purpose is to avoid an optimization without appropriate knowledge in terms of interaction among meta-product and resources. Then, the Functional Requirements definition, used in AD, could represent the ideal index for the ease of sharing information and knowledge on a wide scale among different industrial sectors. The development of the Smart Eco-design Platform could encourage the use of this approach in real product development. The sharing of the database enables obtaining information for reducing the field of design parameters that satisfy the Functional Requirements. In this way, it could be possible to develop a system of products with an overall higher level of eco-sustainability and a better use of resources through information derived from other fields and experiences. Typical goals that are reachable are, for instance, represented by a system that needs less consumption of energy and material during the whole product life cycle

Axiomatic Design for an Efficient Development of Optimized RPM Systems

New communication technologies and development of increasingly advanced systems for remote assistance create important opportunities related to the spread of e-health systems and devices for health monitoring and healthcare integration. Despite the increasingly widespread use of Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) systems, especially in presence of chronic diseases, users’ needs and requests are often disregarded due to poor customization of solutions. This is mainly due to the lack of truly interoperable tools allowing for horizontal integration between the various medical and specialized instruments. The proposed model works as a useful approach to ensure that the development of new solutions shall be partially guaranteed. The Axiomatic Design method is a suitable tool to identify the best solutions to meet users’ needs

Ripening-induced changes in microbial groups of artisanal Sicilian goats’ milk cheese

Changes in the microbial flora of “Caprino dei Nebrodi”, a raw goat’s milk cheese produced in Sicily, were studied during ripening. From 2 batches of cheese, 4 samples were taken at day 0, 2, 15, and 30 of ripening. Also, samples of curd and milk used in the manufacturing process were analyzed. By the end of the ripening process (day 30), high log10 cfu/g were found for Lactobacilli (7.20), Lattococci (7.10), and Enterococci (7.00), whereas counts of Enterobacteriaceae (3.91), Escherichia coli (3.30), and Staphylococcus (3.89) were found to be lower. The study provides useful information on the microbiological properties of “Caprino dei Nebrodi” cheese, and the results obtained suggest that in order to increase the quality of this artisanal product, it is necessary to improve the sanitary conditions of milking and cheese-making. The study was intended as a preliminary step towards the isolation and identification of bacterial species found in this type of goat’s cheese

Abstracts from the 23rd Italian congress of Cystic Fibrosis and the 13th National congress of Cystic Fibrosis Italian Society

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) occurs most frequently in caucasian populations. Although less common, this disorder have been reported in all the ethnicities. Currently, there are more than 2000 described sequence variations in CFTR gene, uniformly distributed and including variants pathogenic and benign (CFTR1:www.genet.sickkids.on.ca/). To date,only a subset have been firmily established as variants annotated as disease-causing (CFTR2: www.cftr2.org). The spectrum and the frequency of individual CFTR variants, however, vary among specific ethnic groups and geographic areas. Genetic screening for CF with standard panels of CFTR mutations is widely used for the diagnosis of CF in newborns and symptomatic patients, and to diagnose CF carrier status. These screening panels have an high diagnostic sensitivity (around 85%) for CFTR mutations in caucasians populations but very low for non caucasians. Developed in the last decade, Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) has been the last breakthrough technology in genetic studies with a substantial reduction in cost per sequenced base and a considerable enhancement of the sequence generation capabilities. Extended CFTR gene sequencing in NGS includes all the coding regions, the splicing sites and their flankig intronic regions, deep intronic regions where are localized known mutations,the promoter and the 5'-3' UTR regions. NGS allows the analysis of many samples concurrently in a shorter period of time compared to Sanger method . Moreover, NGS platforms are able to identify CFTR copy number variation (CNVs), not detected by Sanger sequencing. This technology has provided new and reliable approaches to molecular diagnosis of CF and CFTR-Related Disorders. It also allows to improve the diagnostic sensitivity of newborn and carrier screeningmolecular tests. In fact, bioinformatics tools suitable for all the NGS platforms can filter data generated from the gene sequencing, and analyze only mutations with well-established disease liability. This approach allows the development of targeted mutations panels with a higher number of frequent CF mutations for the target populationcompared to the standard panels and a consequent enhancement of the diagnostic sensitivity. Moreover, in the emerging challenge of diagnosing CF in non caucasians patients, the possibility of customize a NGS targeted mutations panel should increase the diagnostic sensitivity when the target population has different ethnicities