SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL DYNAMICS OF ROOT REINFORCEMENT IN ALPINE FORESTS

Protection forests represent an effective tool to prevent and mitigate hydrogeological instabilities and are object of renewed interest in the European Alps, where there is a long history of cohabitation between people and natural hazards. The quantification of the effects of forests against the different types of natural hazards is however still a challenge, and represents a key step for the implementation of an integrated protection strategy able to combine engineering structures with forests. Forests provide different protection mechanisms depending on the type of natural hazards we consider. The aim of this work is to give a contribution to the quantification of the effects of forest vegetation against shallow landslides. Mechanical reinforcement of soil given by root systems is considered the most important contribution of alpine forests against shallow landslides. Many studies proved that it plays a key role in slope stability, but its quantification is still a challenge due to the huge variability that characterizes root reinforcement values. Understanding and modeling this variability is a key step in the development of stability models able to account for the role of vegetation, and to provide practical guidelines to foresters involved in the management of protection forests. Root mechanical reinforcement depends primarily on the density and distribution of roots of different diameter class (i.e. number and size of roots) and on their mechanical properties. Both these factors are subject to a huge variability in natural slopes. We can distinguish a spatial variability, due to the different environmental and stand characteristics that influence root systems development, and a temporal variability, due to the anthropic or natural disturbances that modify the forest stand and as consequence the root systems. The first section of this work presents a review on the role of forests against shallow landslides and the state of the art of the studies on root reinforcement, the models used for its quantification and its implementation in the stability models. The second section deals with the spatial variability of root reinforcement at both the regional and stand scale. The variability of root mechanical properties in several alpine species is analyzed basing on a wide data base obtained by laboratory tensile tests on roots coming from different forest sites in northern Italy, and a possible criterion for the interpretation and synthesis of this variability is proposed. The influence of both root mechanical properties and root distribution variability on the estimation of root reinforcement is then assessed in the case of a common alpine species, Picea abies, by means of the Root Bundle Model. Results show the importance of micro variability of root distribution at the stand scale that heavily affects root reinforcement estimation; the variability of root mechanical properties on the other hand cannot be ignored because it can lead to important errors in root reinforcement estimation. In the third section of the work the temporal dynamics of root reinforcement as consequence of logging activities are studied with intensive field work carried out in two different case of study, two mixed Silver fir – Norway spruce stands in the Italian Alps and four Norway spruce stands in the Swiss Alps. New experimental data for the quantification of root reinforcement decay after cutting for the selected species are provided, paying attention to both root mechanical properties and root distribution. A model for the estimation of root reinforcement decay that takes into account both the processes is proposed. Results show the importance of modeling horizontal root distribution in the study on root reinforcement decay and underline the need of further research on the role of natural regeneration in stabilizing gaps after cutting.