Francesco Orsi

Restoring forest landscapes for biodiversity conservation and rural livelihoods: A spatial optimisation model

Conserving nature in the presence of humans is especially challenging in areas where livelihoods are largely based on locally available natural resources. The restoration of forests in such contexts calls for the identification of sites and actions that improve biodiversity protection, and ensure the provision of and accessibility to other forest-related ecosystem services. This paper introduces an integer-linear programming (ILP) approach to identify reforestation priorities that achieve such goals. Applications of ILP to nature conservation are many, but only a few of them deal with the problem of restoration, and none of the available models considers the basic needs of the local population. Given constraints on a restoration budget, the potential conversion of productive lands and the travel time to reach harvestable forest, the model maximises the amount of reforestation area (weighted by priority values) and minimises the harvesting of existing forest, while ensuring the conservation of landscape diversity, the satisfaction of timber demands and the stabilisation of erosion-prone land. As an input, suitability maps, generated through a combination of ecological criteria, are used to prioritise the selection of reforestation sites. An application to a 430 km^2 area in Central Chiapas (Mexico) resulted in compact patches and thus a manageable reforestation plan. Acceptable trade-offs were found between the amount of soil stabilisation possible and the prioritisation goals, while uncertainty in the prioritisation scores did not significantly affect the results. We show that restoration actions can be spatially designed to benefit both nature and people with minimal losses on both sides.

Assessing the tourism-traffic paradox in mountain destinations. A stated preference survey on the Dolomites’ passes (Italy)

ABSTRACT In ecologically sensitive but tourism-intensive areas, transport policy-makers face the paradox of understanding the need to minimize transport-related impacts, yet being practically unable to change the status quo. This occurs because the acknowledged negative impact of traffic on the tourism economy is perceived as less problematic than the potential effects of traffic management. This paper assesses this paradox by quantifying the effects of traffic management measures on tourist demand in the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage Site (Italy) and proposing measures that minimize negative side-effects. The study is based on a stated preference survey to elicit visitor sensitivities to a series of management and experiential conditions, and subsequent simulations for estimating the outcomes of future traffic management. Results show that the above-mentioned paradox might be dealt with if a well-balanced mix of “carrot” and “stick” measures is introduced according to territorial needs. In the case of the Dolomites, this means that alternative transportation should be highly performing, i.e. cheap, frequent, integrated and running on an extended daily schedule, whereas restrictions on private mobility should be clear and unavoidable. Results of this study are part of a broader process of re-designing tourism and transportation systems as integrated domains.

Analysis of Bundles and Drivers of Change of Multiple Ecosystem Services in an Alpine Region

Approaches based on the concept of ecosystem services need analyses of the sets of spatially correlated services (i.e. bundles) and of the external factors that modify the ecosystem service supply (i.e. drivers of change). At present, appropriate methods to analyse bundles and drivers of change are still under development. This study proposes a method based on a combination of spatial and statistical analyses to define bundles and to explain the drivers of change of 24 ecosystem services in Trentino, an Alpine region of Italy. Results show that multiple services can be grouped in a few number of bundles with a complex shape. When mapping multiple services across the territory, the spatial units of representation are a combination of the intrinsic units of representation of single ecosystem services and land use classes. Land use management was found as the external factor that causes the greatest variability of the ecosystem services distribution across the region.