Trend analysis of forest utilization in Tuscany region.

Wood production is one of the main forest ecosystem services, it is related to the economic and social utility of forest resources in supporting national economies and forest-dependent people. A sustainable management of forest wood production is first of all related to the possibility of securing wood availability for present and future generations. A well-known indicator of such a sustainability is the ratio between increments and fellings. This contribution is aimed at evaluating a trend analysis of forest fellings in the period 2001-2010 in the Tuscany Region (central Italy), covering an area of 22990 km2 which is for the 50% forested. To do so we firstly extracted the data from the Annals of Italian Statistic related to forest wood production. In particular we considered (i) the harvested area (ha), (ii) the number of interventions (iii) the growing stock volume of felled trees (m3 ). This information was compared with increments data extracted from the national forest inventory (INFC). The results of the analysis are discussed to highlight the temporal trends of the sustainability of the forest harvesting operations in Tuscany Region.