ADAPTIVE SILVICULTURAL STRATEGIES TO INCREASE RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE OF FOREST ECOSYSTEMS UNDER GLOBAL CHANGES

represent one of the most complex but vital ecosystems on the planet. The wide range of functions they absolve – ecological, economic, social, spiritual, and recreational – are essential for global environmental equilibrium and human life. However, global change drivers, such as climate change (CC) and land use change (LUC), are threatening their functionality and stability. In Europe, LUC most often means forest management abandonment. Neglection of traditional silvicultural systems, such as coppice management, has altered forest structure, increased vulnerability, and reduced resilience to natural disturbances (e.g., wildfires, windthrows, and hydrogeological hazards). In this context, adaptive forest management is necessary to maintain ecosystem services under uncertain future scenarios. This PhD thesis explores adaptive silvicultural strategies combining closer-to-nature principles with natural hazard mitigation criteria, aiming to enhance forest resistance and resilience while addressing abandonment. After a broader evaluation of abandonment effects on coppiced forest, the thesis focuses on two forest types with high ecological and social relevance in Italy: Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) coppices and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) forests on mountain slopes. The first chapter presents a structured review of European studies on the effects of coppice withdrawal from regular management, revealing that while abandonment may increase short-term carbon storage and late-successional biodiversity, it often leads to long-term functional trade-offs, such as reduced structural diversity and losses in resistance and resilience to natural disturbances. The findings highlight the need for context-specific, multifunctional management of coppice systems within adaptive frameworks. The second chapter evaluates the ecological sustainability of year-round cutting in chestnut coppices through a multi-season field experiment. Results demonstrated the non-significance of cutting season differences on stump mortality, sprout vitality, or shoot growth, confirming chestnut’s great resprouting capacity. These findings challenge current regulatory restrictions that limit coppicing to the dormant season and support a more flexible management to face abandonment and mitigate associated hazards.