Thinning in Chestnut Coppices: Effects on the Forest Ground and Recovery Capacity

Abstract

The abandonment of traditional forestry practices and the lack of updating these to more modern practices, as for the government of the coppices, has led to a dangerous homogenization of the landscape with a consequent loss of the ecosystem’s variety and the landscape’s complexity and biodiversity. The coppice management combined with the basic requirements of sustainability is possible with careful logging activities and a continuous monitoring of the impacts on the ground and on the renovation. The chestnut coppice management corresponds to a specific productive model, with questionable values of naturality but without heavy impacts. It is known that the greatest impact is due to the harvesting, so it must be carried out carefully. If the wooden assortments request is connected to a local management, production and consumption chain, the coppice government can be a valid forest management method both in terms of the biomass, landscape diversity and heterogeneousness of the forest cover, fulfilling the commitments of the preservation of biodiversity.

Keywords

• coppice
• thinning
• chestnut
• biodiversity
• sustainable forest management