La stima delle superfici forestali per l’Italia: le incertezze del Nuovo Inventario delle Foreste e del Carbonio

Abstract

Following the entry of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) into force, a new functionality has been added to the National Forestry Inventories (NFI), which are used to account for carbon stock changes in forest carbon pools. All Countries have to select a national forest definition in accordance with the KP rules. The KP requests that minimum thresholds for area, crown coverage and tree height are set. Thus the adopted forest definition drives the accounting of any forest-related land use and land-use change activities. The new NFIs should characterize the forest variables in accordance with the new forest definitions and thus they should adopt methodologies which are able to represent forest area as defined. The Italian NFI has applied a new methodology which is not in line with its own forest definition since this method considers new criteria of homogeneity in order to classify forest area. The homogeneity criteria requires a subjective analysis of the area around each sample point; thus the sample area assignment is not carried out objectively and univocally and consequently measurements are not reproducible either in time or space. The authors suggest an improved methodology that would allow the sampling of the national territory in line with the NFI forest definition. The main characteristic of the proposed methodology is to assign and to analyze a circular area around each sample point. The size of the circular area is taken equal to the NFI forest definition minimum threshold. The application of this methodology would result in objective and univocal measurements which are reproducible either in time or space.