Coppice today: which management beyond definitions?

The economical-social change, the competitiveness and “modernity” of fossil fuels, their prompt diffusion are the concurrent factors that heavily reduced the use of coppice firewood and charcoal since the fifties of the last century. Therefore, a shift took place in the last 60 years from the homogeneous area made of intensively managed, young stands to the more and more differentiated standing crops, as for structural features, growing stocks and growth dynamics, even though all of them originated from a common matrix. Nowadays, the former coppice area includes stands managed under lengthened rotations, outgrown coppices, the coppice conversion into high forest. The 2005 National Forest Inventory reported that 87% of standing crops was included in the age-classes 20-40 and over 40 years, with variable percentages according to tree species, from beech up to thermophilous oaks. Here, the basis of historical judgment on the coppice system, the reasons underlying the outgrown coppice establishment, the current standards of cultivation under even doubled rotations, are critically analyzed. The current demand to reduce the use of fossil fuels by renewable bio-energy sources and to face up the effects of climate change (unpredictability, rainfall reduction, higher air temperature, prolonged droughts, water stress, fire risk) give a new boost to the coppice system. Main goals today are to: (i) optimize the capacity of firewood production to reduce the heavy deficit at the country level; (ii) make the best use of the regeneration ability inherent to the system against the more sensitive regeneration from seed in the changing environment. The positive growth trend, the maintenance of resprouting ability as well as of vital stools density in the outgrown coppice area, address to a sustainable increase of rotations up to the age of 50 years, as already highlighted by a few regional regulations. It would allow the recovery of a current volume increment of 1-1.5 M m3 to internal firewood production. Unsuitable stand locations or bio-ecological conditions as well as stands already under conversion into high forest are obviously excluded. The approach to coppice system maintenance within the variable territorial context, the possible innovation and the definition of flexible silvicultural models are then outlined. The useful updating and harmonization of forest regulations are finally recalled.