by Jordan Palli, University of Tuscia
Human disturbance has altered the integrity and functionality of forests throughout the globe, with the greatest impact on regions characterized by historical human cultural development and long-term natural resource exploitation. This is the case in the Mediterranean Basin, where terrestrial ecosystems have been shaped and simplified for thousands of years.
The challenge today is to restore primeval habitats and ecosystems through the implementation of effective recovery strategies based on actual dynamics of compositional, structural and functional recovery. Such knowledge would be pivotal to meeting biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation targets.
A new study performed in southern Italy and published in Science of the Total Environment, reveals the patterns and processes of forest regrowth and ecological recovery in an open-air laboratory: the Gariglione Forest in the Sila National Park. This mixed beech-fir forest was extensively harvested between 1930 and 1950, removing up to 91% of the biomass to respond to the market's growing demand for wood.
After this period, the forest was managed using conservation practices and then led to passive rewilding. Today, Gariglione features a tall structure (up to 40 m in height), a complex vertical profile and secondary old-growth traits.
A team of researchers at the University of Tuscia, Accademia Italiana di Scienze Forestali and the University of Calabria in collaboration with the Sila National Park have reconstructed growth histories, climate-growth relationships and time-series of growth dominance of trees in the Gariglione Forest, revealing the mechanism of species and ecosystem resilience to large-scale perturbations in a hotspot of biodiversity and climate change.
