Vol. 67 No. 3 (2012)
Special section

High Nature Value forest areas: a proposal for Italy based on national forest inventory data

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  • Giuseppe Pignatti,
  • Flora De Natale,
  • Patrizia Gasparini,
  • Angelo Mariano,
  • Antonella Trisorio
Giuseppe Pignatti
Agricultural Research Council (CRA), Research Unit for Intensive Wood Production, via Valle della Quistione 27; 00166 Roma, Italy.
Flora De Natale
Agricultural Research Council (CRA), Research Unit for Intensive Wood Production, via Valle della Quistione 27; 00166 Roma, Italy.
Patrizia Gasparini
Agricultural Research Council (CRA), Forest Monitoring and Management Research Unit, Piazza Niccolini 6; 38100 Trento, Italy
Angelo Mariano
National Forest Service (CFS), Ministry of Agricultural and Forest Policies (MIPAF), via Carducci 5, 00187 Roma, Italy.
Antonella Trisorio
National Institute of Agricultural Economics (INEA), via Nomentana 41, 00161 Roma, Italy.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4129/ifm.2012.3.06

Published 2012-07-03

Keywords

  • high nature value,
  • indicators,
  • national forest inventory,
  • rural development

Copyright (c) 2012 Italian Journal of Forest and Mountain Environments

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The maintenance and enhancement of High Nature Value (HNV) farming and forestry systems is a strategic objective of the European Rural Development Policy. The assessment of the effectiveness of rural development measures as regards this objective is a challenging task. The paper focuses on HNV forest areas and presents an approach to assessing their baseline extent in Italy. The procedure described here is consistent with the guidelines provided by the European Evaluation Network for Rural Development. Based on National Forest Inventory (NFI) data, sound estimates are provided of the extent of HNV forest area at national and regional level. The use of NFI data ensures consistency of data collection and processing at the national level as required in European Commission’s methodological guidelines. Following this approach, the overall of HNV forest in Italy amounts to 2,259,066 ha, which corresponds to 26% of the total forest area.

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