Forest@ (Feb 2011)

National-scale analysis for the identification of High Conservation Value Forests (HCVFs)

  • Maesano M,
  • Giongo Alves MV,
  • Ottaviano M,
  • Marchetti M

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3832/efor0649-008
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 22 – 34

Abstract

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In Italy, forests cover about one third of the national territory. In recent years, sustainability has been applied to forest management through the introduction of the Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) concept. Since the Rio Conference, several initiatives at international and governmental level aimed to realize the SFM concept by the establishment of a set of principles with general validity. One of the most successful initiatives is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which has developed a system of voluntary certification specific for the forestry sector, as well as 10 principles and 56 criteria for good forest management. The concept of High Conservation Value Forest concept (HCVFs) was defined in 1999 by FSC under Principle 9, and its application requires the identification of six categories of High Conservation Values (HCV). The aim of this study was to define the parameters for the HCVFs Italian forests, A first national mapping for the first level of High Conservation Value was developed focusing on protected areas, threatened and endangered species and the ecosystemic temporal use. Protected areas may constitute the basis of the SFM. This work is the result of data processing and distribution analysis through the intersection of vectorial data of national forests areas in ArcMap, on the basis of available information. Protected forest areas represent 34% of the national forest area. The different categories of protected areas contribute differently to protection, in particular the larger amount of preserved forests (22.96%) falls within Sites of Community Importance (SCI). The analysis of highly protected forest types revealed major differences likely linked to site ecological conditions, which are extremely variable over the country. The HCVF concept is applied in the forest certification field and can be used in sustainable forest management, planning and land use, and policy commitments.

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