Facing Challenges
Forestry management in Italy faces many challenges. Italian forests have large areas of coppice. [Coppicing is a woodland management practice that maintains trees at a juvenile stage. Trees are cut down to near ground level so multiple shoots emerge from the original single trunk.] Areas with natural or seminatural standing forests have a low utilization rate. Only one-third of the wood is harvested yearly.
Most forestland is privately held (69 percent for coppice and 47 percent for high forest stands), is not contiguous, and lacks planned management. Lack of infrastructure and steep terrain make access to forestland difficult. In addition, strong regulation creates protected areas that limit the volume of timber that can be harvested per surface unit. Forestry workers are often without training and professional education. All these characteristics, combined with low use of technology, drive costs up and make domestic timber less competitive.
The forestry-wood chain is a multifaceted process that involves people and machines affected by environmental, ecological, social, and economic factors. Through each step of the chain, wood value increases. Cutting, skidding, and hauling operations can be very expensive if the physical environment is difficult and forestry systems used are not efficient.
This could lead to a situation in which timber values would be depreciated to the point that wood would not be cut. Logging and transporting optimization are becoming key areas for improvement. Research efforts for modeling and planning improvements to the wood chain are increasing.
An accompanying article, "Planning Forest Operations—A rule-based spatial DSS built with ModelBuilder," by Daniele Lubello of University of Padova, Italy, describes how forest managers apply GIS processes to the evaluation of technical and cost aspects of logging timber.
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