Elia Vangi

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute for Mediterranean Agriculture and Forest Systems ISAFoM

Through photosynthesis, forests absorb annually large amounts of atmospheric CO2. However, they also release CO2 back through respiration. These two, opposite in sign, large fluxes determine how much of the carbon is stored or released back into the atmosphere. The mean seasonal cycle (MSC) is an interesting metric that associates phenology and car...

In European mountains most beech forest areas have been managed for timber production. This practice has reduced the availability of biomass for the whole forest-dwelling species assemblage and of deadwood for the saproxylic community. Despite most of Italy's beech stands having a long history of management, its effects on forest species remain poo...

Carbon assimilation and wood production are influenced by environmental conditions and endogenous factors, such as species auto-ecology, age, and hierarchical position within the forest structure. Disentangling the intricate relationships between those factors is more pressing than ever before due to the pressure of climate change. Yet, our underst...

Through photosynthesis, forests absorb annually large amounts of atmospheric CO2. However, they also release CO2 back through respiration. These two, opposite in sign, large fluxes determine, much of the carbon that is stored or released back to the atmosphere. The mean seasonal cycle (MSC) is an interesting metric that associate phenology and carb...

Tropical deforestation in the African continent plays a key role in the global carbon cycle and bears significant implications in terms of climate change and sustainable development. Especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than two-thirds of the population rely on forest and woodland resources for their livelihoods, deforestation and land use...

The quantification of tree-related microhabitats (TreMs) and multi-taxon biodiversity is pivotal to the implementation of forest conservation policies, which are crucial under the current climate change scenarios. We assessed the capacity of Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data to quantify biodiversity indices related to both forest beetle and bird c...

Tree mortality and forest dieback episodes are increasing due to drought and heat stress. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms enabling trees to withstand and survive droughts remains lacking. Our study investigated basal area increment (BAI), and δ¹³C-derived intrinsic water-use-efficiency (iWUE), to elucidate beech resilience...

The Mediterranean basin is a well-known drought-prone region, making forest ecosystems potentially vulnerable to drought episodes, heat waves and dry spells. In the last two decades, extreme weather events affected different regions of Europe including mediterranean áreas. This led to significant impacts on forest ecosystems, with extensive mortali...

Tree age plays an essential role in forest ecosystems' functioning by affecting structural and physiological plant traits that modulate the water and carbon budgets. On the other hand, tree age distribution in forests depends on population dynamics and, therefore, on the balance between tree mortality and regeneration events, which are ultimately c...

Forest types are key factors to consider when monitoring forests, particularly in consideration of the increasing need to assess how climate change is affecting different forests in Europe and beyond. A comprehensive classification system is indeed essential for understanding the diverse forest ecosystems, tracking their changes over time and acros...

The present deliverable reports on forest management practices in the case study areas (CSAs) of OptFor-EU and their relevance in the CSAs. The first section includes the context of this deliverable. The second section includes the general modeling framework, a literature review of forest management practices, detailed descriptions of current manag...

Stand age significantly influences the functioning of forest ecosystems by shaping structural and physiological plant traits, affecting water and carbon budgets. Forest age distribution is determined by the interplay of tree mortality and regeneration, influenced by both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Thus, human-driven alteration of tree...

Process-based Forest Models (PBFMs) offer the possibility to capture important spatial and temporal patterns of both carbon fluxes and stocks in forests, accounting for ecophysiological, climate and geographical variability. Yet, their predictive capacity should be demonstrated not only at the stand-level but also in the context of large spatial an...

Tree mortality and forest dieback episodes are increasing due to drought and heat stress. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms enabling trees to withstand and survive droughts remains lacking. Our study investigated basal area increment (BAI), and δ13C-derived intrinsic water-use-efficiency (iWUE), to elucidate beech resilience...

In the context of the potential future use of unmanned ground vehicles for forest inventories, we present the first experiences with SPOT, a legged robot equipped with a LiDAR instrument and several cameras that have been used with a teleoperation approach for single-tree detection and measurements. This first test was carried out using the default...

Le Strategie Europee per le Foreste per la Biodiversità e per il Suolo, insieme alla Strategia Forestale Nazionale, riconoscono l'importanza cruciale della gestione forestale sostenibile nell'affrontare nuove sfide. Queste sfide comprendono l'aumento della gravità e della frequenza di eventi di disturbo naturali, come tempeste di vento, siccità e p...

In this study we evaluated the effects that currently in-use sylvicultural practices have on the tree features affecting biodiversity indicators in high beech forests in the Tuscan Apennines. The field work was carried out in five study areas: three areas with different age managed with the uniform shelterwood system, one area managed with the sing...

Abstract This is the 3D-CMCC-FEM (Three Dimensional - Coupled Model Carbon Cycle - Forest Ecosystem Model) user guide for the version 5.5-ISIMIP and 5.6. The 3D-CMCC-FEM is a biochemical, biophysical process-based model and is basically a research tool which is freely available only for non-commercial use. This user guide describes the essential st...

Osmoderma eremita and Cerambyx cerdo are saproxylic beetle species, included in the IUCN Red List and in the EU/92 Habitats Directive. Their occurrence has been recorded, through appropriate traps, in several localities in Italy, including urban and peri-urban parks, mostly associated with veteran trees. In this study, traps were tested over 17 vet...

Process-based Forest Models (PBFMs) offer the possibility to capture important spatial and temporal patterns of both carbon fluxes and stocks in forests, accounting for ecophysiological, climate and geographical variability. Yet, their predictive capacity should be demonstrated not only at the stand-level but also in the context of large spatial an...

The attention of the new EU Forest Strategy for 2030 is focused on developing sustainable strategies to revert biodiversity loss in managed forests. In the managed beech forests of Central Italy (Molise), the diversity of saproxylic species is under threat by intensive management and interventions are needed to revert this negative trend. To evalua...

In the managed beech forests of Central Italy (Molise), the diversity of saproxylic species is potentially under threat by intensive management. To evaluate the impact of forestry on the biodiversity of these ecosystems, we analyzed the relationship between abundance of saproxylic beetles and (i) forest stand exposure and elevation, (ii) deadwood a...

Forest restoration activities and tree plantations play an important role in combating global warming. On the other hand, quantifying their carbon storage is a challenging task due to very short rotations and the effort and costs required for field analysis, often in remote and hardly accessible regions. In this context, remote sensing combined wit...

Forests provide many services to society but climate change, biotic, and abiotic forest disturbances are altering ecological systems. Among these, Mediterranean pine forests, distinctive environmental elements of the Italian coastal area for both natural and historical reasons, are particularly susceptible. As evidenced by numerous wind damages, dr...

Forest ecosystems with complex structures provide a wide variety of habitats and ecological niches that guarantee high levels of biodiversity. Remote sensing techniques have been widely used to quantify the heterogeneity and complexity of forest ecosystems. In particular, airborne laser scanning (ALS) by providing three-dimensional information of t...

Forests provide many services to society but climate change, biotic, and abiotic forest disturbances are altering ecological systems. Among these, Mediterranean pine forests, distinctive environmental elements of the Italian coastal area for both natural and historical reasons, are particularly susceptible. As evidenced by numerous wind damages, dr...

Biodiversity monitoring represents a major challenge to support forest ecosystems. In this context, remote sensing is a powerful tool, continuously providing free data at a different range of spatial and temporal scales. In particular, Sentinel-2 (S2) mission has great potential to produce reliable proxies for biological diversity. In the Gran Sass...

Biodiversity monitoring represents a major challenge to supporting proper forest ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation. The latter is indeed shifting in recent years from single-species to multi-taxon approaches. However, multi-taxonomic studies are quite rare due to the effort required for performing field surveys. In this context, re...

Forest ecosystems’ structure and biomass monitoring are crucial for understanding the contribution of forests to the global greenhouse gas balance. NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission collects waveform lidar data to estimate Above Ground Biomass Density (AGBD). While of great interest, GEDI data are challenging to download...

Several political initiatives aim to achieve net-zero emissions by the middle of the twenty-first century. In this context, forests are crucial as a carbon sink to store unavoidable emissions. Assessing the carbon sequestration potential of forest ecosystems is pivotal to the availability of accurate forest variable estimates for supporting interna...

Within the Paris Agreement's Enhanced Transparency Framework, consistent data collections are the prerequisite for a successful reporting of GHG emissions. For such purposes, NFIs are usually the primary source of information, even if they are frequently not designed for producing estimations on a yearly basis and in the form of wall-to-wall high-r...

Forests provide many services to society but climate change, biotic, and abiotic forest disturbances are altering ecological systems. Among these, Mediterranean pine forests, distinctive environmental elements of the Italian coastal area for both natural and historical reasons, are particularly susceptible. As evidenced by numerous wind damages, dr...

1. Introduction Forests play a pivotal role in climate change mitigation since they act as a relevant carbon sink, absorbing a relevant amount of human carbon emissions. Natural disturbances, such as fires, insect outbreaks, and windthrows are an integral part of ecosystem dynamics in forests around the globe. However, due to climate change, forest...

Introduction Biodiversity monitoring represents a major challenge in forest ecosystems and where conservation strategies have shifted from single-species protection toward a multi-taxon approach. Multitaxonomic studies linking biodiversity to forest structural variables are quite rare, due to the effort required for field surveys. In this context,...

Introduction Forests have provided human societies with essential ecosystem services and great economic values for centuries. Particularly, forests play a key role in mitigating greenhouse gases and fighting climate change. However, several environmental stressors threaten the integrity and ecological functionalities of forests. In recent decades,...

Background Rapid climate changes lead to an increase in forest disturbance, which in turn lead to growing concerns for biodiversity. While saproxylic beetles are relevant indicators for studying different aspects of biodiversity, most are smaller than 2 mm and difficult to sample. This, together with a high number of species and trophic roles, make...

Forests are biologically diverse systems and offer a variety of habitats for plants, animals and other organisms. Moreover, forests support and sustain human wellbeing through a series of goods and services they provide, both directly and indirectly. However, forest biodiversity is increasingly threatened, mainly due to degradation of ecosystems, c...

Large-scale forest monitoring benefits greatly from change detection analysis based on remote sensing data because it enables characterizing forest dynamics of disturbance and recovery by detecting both gradual and abrupt changes on Earth’s surface. In this study, two of the main disturbances occurring in Mediterranean forests, harvesting operation...

Machine Learning Forest Simulator (MLFS) is the first complete data-driven forest development model, organized as R package. The main motivation behind the development was to remove the need for model parametrization and to provide easy to use and freely available tool, applicable to all forest ecosystems, from even-aged monocultures to mixed fores...

Forests play a prominent role in the battle against climate change, as they absorb a relevant part of human carbon emissions. However, precisely because of climate change, forest disturbances are expected to increase and alter forests’ capacity to absorb carbon. In this context, forest monitoring using all available sources of information is crucia...

Forest parameter estimation is required to support the sustainable management of forest ecosystems. Currently, forest resource assessment is increasingly linked to auxiliary information obtained from remote sensing (RS) technologies. In forest parameter estimation, airborne laser scanning (ALS) data have been demonstrated to be an invaluable source...

Poplars are one of the most widespread fast-growing tree species used for forest plantations. Owing to their distinct features (fast growth and short rotation) and the dependency on the timber price market, poplar plantations are characterized by large inter-annual fluctuations in their extent and distribution. Therefore, monitoring poplar plantati...

Forest ecosystems have a crucial role for biodiversity conservation, providing a large set of ecosystem services. Understanding and assessing forest disturbance regimes on a large spatial and temporal scale is a prerequisite setting up sustainable forest management solutions. In this context, Remote Sensing is an efficient tool frequently used in l...

Mapping forest disturbances is an essential component of forest monitoring systems both to support local decisions and for international reporting. Between the 28 and 29 October 2018, the VAIA storm hit the Northeast regions of Italy with wind gusts exceeding 200 km h−1. The forests in these regions have been seriously damaged. Over 490 Municipalit...

Forest planning, forest management, and forest policy require updated, reliable , and harmonized spatial datasets. In Italy a national geographic Forest Information System (FIS) designed to store and facilitate the access and analysis of spatial datasets is still missing. Among the different information layers which are useful to start populating a...

Information about forest cover and its characteristics are essential in national and international forest inventories, monitoring programs, and reporting activities [...]

Different forest types based on different tree species composition may have similar spectral signatures if observed with traditional multispectral satellite sensors. Hyperspectral imagery, with a more continuous representation of their spectral behavior may instead be used for their classification. The new hyperspectral Precursore IperSpettrale del...