Enhancing chestnut coppices: silvicultural management and socio-economic context

<span lang="EN-US"> Castanea sativa is one of the most important species for timber production in Italy but, both management system, ownership type and wood chain structure, aren’t able to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>enhance enough the market value of wood assortments. Although the high demand of quality timber, the internal production is heavily<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reduced, mainly as far as timber quality is concerned and because of the lack of suitable timber sizes. In this context, experimental trials<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>have been approached to identify and verify which silvicultural methods are best suited to reach high yields depending to the investments<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>needed and the local socio-economical condition. Two technical approaches were evaluated: stand silviculture and single-tree oriented silviculture. As for the socio-economical aspects, a few demographic indexes have been examined and the first-phase processing enterprises<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>acting in the concerned area were analyzed. The goals of this paper are to evaluate the biological response to the applied silviculture, to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>analyze the problems arisen and to estimate the applicability of the proposed methods in relation to the different socio-economic contexts. The research has been carried out in Tuscany in two important forest areas - Monte Amiata and Colline Metallifere - in young chestnut<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>coppices characterized by an homogeneous stand density and a good site index. The two examined districts showed some similarities<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but they have mainly highlighted important differences about the social structure and concerns and enterprises characteristics. The area of Monte Amiata is typified by a higher residents density then the Colline Metallifere but only 1/3 of the population is employed in the agro-forest sector. In addition, in the Monte Amiata district most concerns are sized less than 2 hectares and chestnut is the main forest<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>species. On the contrary, in the Colline Metallifere the agro-forest sector (57% of workers) is one of the main sources of income for the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>local communities and medium-sized concerns are noteworthy present. Chestnut stands have here a marginal role, oaks are dominant<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the prevailing assortment is firewood. From a silvicultural viewpoint, both the studied areas showed a quite good potentiality, suitable</span> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id=ieooui></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabella normale"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]-->