30 Years of forest soil monitoring: results from the italian ICP-Forests network

Forests support a broad range of ecosystem services. These services cannot simply be traced back to the individual biotic and abiotic components of the forest ecosystems. Rather, they stem from complex interactions between these components. CON.ECO.FOR, the Italian branch of the ICP-Forests (International Co-operative Program on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests) network, established in 1994, has shown to be a unique data source for understanding forest interactions and processes. This contribution aims to draw a comprehensive picture of the Italian forest soil conditions by reviewing the main issues that have arisen and the results obtained over the last 30 years of forest soil monitoring. Forest health is often controlled by soil-mediated processes. Thus, we have evidenced how including soil parameters in environmental studies has proven to be of high value for a better understanding of forest ecosystem conditions and trends. Here, we are reviewing all of the results obtained concerning soils from the analyses of the impacts of atmospheric deposition on forest soils to the study of the relationships between organism diversity and the soil.