Marco Cervellini

Unravelling mechanisms of short-term vegetation dynamics in complex coppice forest systems

The silvicultural management of coppicing has been very common in deciduous forests in many European countries. After decades of decline of this practice, socio-economic changes might induce a revival valuing the biomass as a resource. New insights in the ecological processes that regulate plant diversity are relevant for a sustainable forest management. While studies on long-term changes are available, the short-term dynamics of the coppice forest understorey has not yet been explored. In this context, it is interesting to evaluate the species compositional changes, including the processes of species turnover and species impoverishment (nestedness) and to investigate the role of plant functional traits. For this purpose, we resampled a chronosequence of complex coppice beech forests of the Central Apennines (Italy) monitoring the short-time species dynamics of five years (i.e. from 2006 to 2011) in three age classes, i.e. post-logged, recovering and old coppice stands (0–16, 17–31 and > 32 years, respectively). In contrast to our expectation, declining species richness appeared only in the recovering stands, while the landscape scale (between-stand) heterogeneity, except for post-logged and recovering stands in 2011, did not change over five years. Significant temporal nestedness was found in each stage of succession. However, the rate of species turnover and species impoverishment do not significantly differ among the three age classes, indicating their constant importance along the forest regeneration after disturbance. Only in the early stage of forest regeneration after coppicing, species compositional changes are reflected by functional changes with surviving understorey species having clonal regeneration traits. Our results suggest an overall landscape-scale stability (and sustainability) of this coppice forest system. We conclude with management indications, highlighting the importance of maintaining the traditional local approach (coppicing with standards in small 0.5–1.0 ha sized management units with a ca 30-year rotation cycle) where active coppice parcels are interspersed by abandoned stands.

Distinctive and Pleasant – Transformative Concepts in Landscape Ecology: Social Ecological Green Spaces (SEGS)

Landscape means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors. Unfortunately, this definition hides different criticalities in relation to landscape analyses. In this perspective, landscape ecology should begin to consider ownership types, labour relations, and social perceptions of quality of life, moving towards a concept that can be defined as social ecological green spaces (SEGS). The need for a change fits well with the Adriatic City, which is characterized by a highly fragmented and heterogeneous landscape. First attempts of research show that people’s perception is strictly related to thermal conditions which are strictly related to elements capable of reducing outdoor temperature such as green areas and green canopies. Multidisciplinary approach will help to characterize what could be defined as SEGS, relating the aesthetic, health, and emotional components of the urban quality of life to the shape, distribution, and species composition of green areas.

European Grasslands Gradient and the Resilience to Extreme Climate Events: The SIGNAL Project in Italy

Extreme weather events, land use, and the presence of invasive species can act as pressures threatening biodiversity, resilience and ecosystem services. Particularly in the open cultural landscape, these pressures can suddenly drive ecosystems across tipping points and beyond thresholds of system integrity. Yet, biodiversity holds features for buffering against change. Potential stabilizing mechanisms include species richness, presence of key species such as legumes, and intraspecific diversity. These potential buffers can be promoted by conservation management and political decisions. On this basis, the results of the SIGNAL project and the related scientific based knowledge, will help to develop recommendations that could be used by International, national and local authorities, EU institutions, NGOs, for agriculture, landscape management and biodiversity conservation. Here we briefly describe the project and the Italian field experimental site.