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Old-growth forests and silviculture in the Italian Alps: The case-study of the strict reserve of Paneveggio (TN)

ABSTRACT All forests in the Italian Alps have been affected by humans in some way, either through direct periodic destruction of the forest or by more subtle forms of management and habitat manipulation. For this reason it is very difficult to find stands with “old-growth properties”. However, in the last century there has been a noticeable reduction in many human activities in the mountains and, as a result, many forest stands have developed naturally over the past few decades, even if their composition and structure still reflect past human activity. This makes it particularly important to study the unmanaged parts of previously managed forests: the past history, present structures and long-term monitoring of these forest stands are fundamental steps for increasing our knowledge of the natural forest stand dynamics. Knowledge of this sort is an important reference tool for the present and future development of near-natural silviculture aimed at producing commodities as well as maintaining environmental values. In this paper, a case study in the forest of Paneveggio is presented. In this forest, a strict forest reserve of about 100 ha was established, and a long-term forest dynamics study was set up in four 1-ha plots. The main results of the study of the stand histories of these plots are presented, and their current naturalness status is discussed.