The Forest Map of Italy: an innovative tool for comprehensive planning of Italian woodlands

Knowledge about the status of forest ecosystems and sectors related to forest management constitutes a central topic, especially from the perspective of the forest-based bioeconomy. Nevertheless, for decades, Italy lacked a unified, detailed national forest map to support forest planning and management at various scales of detail. The recent Forest Map of Italy (namely, “Carta Forestale d’Italia,” CFI2020) has been developed to fill this gap as requested by Legislative Decree No. 34/2018. CFI2020 is the first high-resolution (1:10,000 scale) Forest Map of Italy, with 2020 as reference year, produced by harmonizing regional forest maps and updating them with the most recent aerial ortho-photographs. It adopts multiple forest definitions (national, international, and local) and a type-based nomenclatural system based on hierarchical classification to integrate local (regional) definitions with national and European typologies. CFI2020 has been implemented in the new Italian National Forest and Forestry Information System (SINFor), both an open-data platform for collecting forestry information and a decision support system created to help decision-makers of the forestry sector by viewing and querying forest databases available on a national scale in Italy. Preliminary results derived from the National Map indicate that Italy’s forest area has increased by ~3% in the last decade​, with an overall mapping of more than 10 million hectares of forest stands for 2020. CFI2020 plays a strategic role not only in providing detailed forest management across various scales but also essential information to support planning decisions for the Italian forestry sector.