Regional Mountain Conference

Mountain forests are increasingly being affected by stand-replacing disturbances, with several consequences on the provision of fundamental ecosystem services.  This can be particularly relevant in complex and densely populated landscapes like those characterizing the Alps. Indeed, when protective forests are involved, forest recovery should be pursued through passive or active restoration strategies, depending on the post-disturbance scenario, but with the aim to maximize the intervention efficacy, to reduce the protection gap and to minimize the costs. To achieve these results, disturbance legacies are precious resources that can foster the recovery process and can thus be exploited to design the most efficient restoration strategy.

Here we describe an innovative approach to estimate the role of disturbance legacies in restoring heavily disturbed forests. We coupled ground-based regeneration data with drone-derived surface roughness as a proxy to assess the disturbance legacies.

Results suggest a positive influence of disturbance legacies on seedling establishment in the short-term, with an increase in regeneration density associated with higher disturbance legacies induced roughness. Model results support the utilization of roughness as a proxy for disturbance legacies after stand replacing disturbance, supporting the high potential of drone derived data at large scale. In addition, distance from living forest edges, post-disturbance treatment and site conditions plays a key role in seedling establishment density in the short-term.

Based on these results, we present some examples of restoration activities currently on-going in the Italian Dolomites where disturbance legacies are being exploited in reforestation projects.