The natural environment has gone through a series of changes as
people have created different types of rural land uses. These vary
from intensively cultivated fields to natural tree and shrubs
communities, and are generally referred to as “landscape”.
While forest and shrub vegetation is expanding in marginal and
remote areas, natural forest vegetation along the coasts and planes
and suburban spaces is increasingly jeopardized by land development
for tourism and industry as well as by transportation
infrastructures. The transformation of the complex mosaic of
naturally vegetated and cultivated land patches is nowadays a major
problem in many European regions. The sustainability of
environmental variability and biological diversity is
threatened.
Restoration of fragmented landscapes under environmental change
should be based on the knowledge that the different segments and
land-uses in a landscape are ecologically closely interlinked.
Therefore, it would be important to integrate the management across
the whole landscape rather than within only isolated landscape
segments.
Forest research contributes to the important task of promoting
sustainability and diversity by developing an array of tools. These
range from landscape analysis and planning to providing the best
plant material and cultivation systems for high quality and
quantity ligno-cellulosic biomass production, to identifying the
most appropriate socio-economic initiatives to make tree and forest
management an economically and environmentally viable activity.
However, there is still a gap in the theory and practice. The
scope of this seminar is sharing the knowledge on how to use
trees and forests for conservation, ecological restoration, energy
and raw material in a sustainable way and how to use forestry in
managing environmental changes.
Objectives
The seminar aims to improve the knowledge in the following
fields:
- Relationship between ecological functions (productivity,
biogeochemical cycles, genetic biodiversity) at the landscape
scale
- Landscape management tools for environmental amelioration and
restoration, such as tree planting, agroforestry, etc.
- Valuation of various forest-related functions, with special
emphasis on forest tourism
The scientific programme is divided into three
topics:
1. Forest biology for a multifunctional
approach to landscape: trees for timber, biomass and
environmental remediation. Biological and silvicultural approaches
for increasing the quantity and quality of goods and environmental
services provided by trees and forests in the landscape
context.
2. Innovative tools for monitoring and planning
the rural and forest landscape
Remote sensing, GIS and modelling as tools for inventorying,
planning and decision-making support for conservation and
development of the rural and forest landscapes.
3. Ecosystem services and tourism: how
to pay for landscape sustainability. Socio-economic research for
valuing forest and landscape externalities while making the forest
and agro-forest management economically more viable. The session is
arranged in collaboration with EFI Regional Office EFIMED.
Scientific Committee
Ted Farrell – EFI
Americo Carvalho-Mendes - UCP
Giuseppe Scarascia-Mugnozza – CNR-IBAF
Marco Marchetti – UNIVERSITY OF MOLISE
Marco Borghetti – UNIVERSITY OF BASILICATA
Lorenzo Venzi – UNIVERSITY OF TUSCIA
Marc Palahi – EFIMED
Yves Birot – EFIMED
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