Outgrown coppice forests between carbon sink and a pro-active role for handling green economy and climate change driven issues, by an adaptive integrated approach

Sustainability of outgrown coppice forests is analyzed within the framework of RETE RURALE NAZIONALE (RRN-task: Forests 22.2). Two outstanding issues are in the foreground: bridge at least partially the gap between firewood domestic production and internal demand for energy; make available to managers all the biological tools (resprouting ability of coppice stools, in the case) to ensure forest regeneration, i.e., handle at best the risk and uncertainty following the progress of climate change. Current arrangement of the formerly homogeneous coppice area highlights the prevalence of outgrown stands as compared with traditional rotations of all tree species concerned. The positive atributes in terms of growth patern and biological productivity still detected at current ages on average site indexes, make afordable the solution of a renewed coppice forestry on a share of the overstocked crops. All of this has a sound basis at the purpose of ensuring both a more consistent renewable energy production (a major green economy issue) and make the best use of the higher resilience of coppice system as compared with the high forest (climate change issue). The analysis of sustainable forest management (SFM) indicators related to each option on the floor, underlines how each of them provides inherent, diferent values. Joining together within the operational scale of forestry a renewed coppice practice with the option of conversion into high forest and the progress of post-cultivation phase on the marginal crops, may address a multifunctional role to the area originated and diferentiated since coppice abandonment. That means a fully adapti - ve and integrated approach, i.e., a modern management vision applied to an ancient but ever-changing system in a changed economical context and a shifing physical scenario.