Roberta Proietti - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Roberta Proietti

Previous research experiences have shown that climate variability can play a relevant role in for... more Previous research experiences have shown that climate variability can play a relevant role in forest planning and management within a climate change scenario. In forest planning and management, yield tables, site quality indices, age classes, and rates of growth are some of the most frequently used parameters and tools. However, these \\u2018traditional\\u2019 methods do not include the influence of climate variability on forest growth over time, although it is one of the main influencing factors in tree growth. Changes in climate determine changes in thermo-pluviometric regimes that often have a marked influence on forest growth trends. Forest biomass, resilience, and carbon sequestration may be damaged unless forest planning and management implement the relationships between climate variability and trends of tree growth. The absence of an approach that implements the relationships between climate variability and tree growth as an ordinary tool for forest planning and management can have significant negative effects on forest biomass, resilience and carbon sequestration. The project AForClimate (Adaption of FORest management to CLIMATE variability: an ecological approach - LIFE15 CCA/IT/000089) aims to adapt forest management to climate change by defining an effective method for estimating the impacts of climate variability on growth of the forest. In this, AForClimate aims to manage forests in order to preserve their resilience, promote their natural renewal and distribute the wood mass harvested over periods with climatic conditions favourable to growth. The project targets beech ecosystems given their economic and ecological importance at European level. In Europe there are about 15 million hectares of beech forests that grow mainly in mountain areas of central and southern Europe, from sea level up to 1,800 m altitude. The expected results of the project are: (i) adapt forest management to climate change in the project areas; (ii) develop a detailed forecasting model for forest management that takes into account climate variability over time; (iii) build a monitoring scheme to assess, at the end of the project, the impacts of the management approach in terms of forest growth and regeneration; (iv) elaborate a prototype of Decision Support System to plan forest management in a climate change scenario. The project feasibility will be demonstrated in three Italian regions (Molise, Sicily, and Tuscany) thanks to the support of three territorial partners responsible for management in their respective areas of competence: Molise Region, Sicily Region, and Mountain Union of the Mugello Municipalitie

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2021

HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific re... more HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial| 4.0 International License

Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Sep 1, 2020

In the Mediterranean region, the coupled effect of recent changes in climatic features and an inc... more In the Mediterranean region, the coupled effect of recent changes in climatic features and an increase in humanrelated water demand induced a progressive reduction in the water level of many lakes. Consequently, intense withdrawals for public supply can affect the health of lake ecosystems and increase trees' vulnerability to predicted drought intensification effects. This study aimed to evaluate, through a dendroecological analysis of riparian trees, the strength of the climatic and hydrological signals retained in the tree-ring widths and to detect a critical water-level threshold affecting tree resilience and growth recovery. Our study area is located within the Regional Natural Park of Bracciano-Martignano in central Italy. In recent years, the lake water-level drop observed at Bracciano after intensive water withdrawals raised concerns about the ecological impacts on the ecosystem's vulnerability. The main distinctive pattern in the climate-growth relations was the influence of previous years precipitation and drought conditions up to five years at Bracciano. At Martignano, where lake water withdrawals are absent, long-term climatic signals disappeared after two years. The intensive human water use at Bracciano Lake most likely induced trees to be more dependent on groundwater raising or soil water content stored from the previous rainy periods especially on an annual scale. On the other hand, tree-ring growth was strongly correlated with short-term water-level fluctuations (monthlyseasonal). Tree-rings of riparian species appear to be a useful tool to detect critical water levels after the intensive water withdrawals and the increase in dry conditions occurred in the past few decades. Yearly values ranging from-108 to-139 cm may be considered as potential thresholds affecting riparian species. This finding may support lake water withdrawal regulation for riparian ecosystem protection and conservation under future drought intensification.

Forest@ - Rivista di Selvicoltura ed Ecologia Forestale, 2005

Contribution to the definition of Regions of Provenance for forest reproductive materials. The st... more Contribution to the definition of Regions of Provenance for forest reproductive materials. The study presents a proposal for ecological zoning of Italy, based on eco-pedological maps, as an aid for defining omogeneous zones for collecting forest propagation materials. The need is stressed for strong ccordination among administrative regions, for common terminology and protocols.

IV Congresso Nazionale di Selvicoltura “Il bosco: bene indispensabile per un presente vivibile e un futuro possibile”, 2018

The leaf phenology is closely related to environmental factors, that makes this ... more The leaf phenology is closely related to environmental factors, that makes this trait a robust indicator of the impacts of climate on forest ecosystems, and trees adaptive capacity to external stressors. For that, the leaf phenology monitoring can be considered a useful tool to understand how trees respond to disturbances, whether environmental or human. Fagus sylvatica L. is a species with a wide natural range in Europe, but few studies about leaf phenology were conducted, especially as monitoring effects post silvicultural treatments.The aim of this work was to apply the leaf phenology to monitor the effects of the main climatic parameters and different silvicultural treatments to evaluate how to apply a sustainable forest management and to increase forest resilience and production.The study was conducted in three different sites of the Life AForClimate Project, in Toscana (Giogo-Casaglia complex - FI), Molise (Roccamandolfi forest - IS) and Sicilia (Monte Soro &#8211; ME). Each site has been divided into 4 sectors based on the aspect (north/south) and the altitude range (high/low, 1st and 4th quartile of local altitudinal range respectively), to cover the extremes of local beech distribution range. Each sector has been divided into 15 plots, which were subjected to different silvicultural treatments: low intensity thinning (D1), high intensity thinning (D2), and Control (C), where the leaf phenology was observed.This study concerns the results of the pre-intervention and post intervention phenological monitoring. Leaf flushing and leaf senescence were monitored weekly from end of March to June, and from September to November, respectively.&#160; Phenological monitoring was performed on 60 healthy, dominant, or co-dominant beech trees with a diameter at breast height of at least 25 cm in each site.The phenophases of leaf flushing and leaf senescence were recorded in situ using a modified scale of BBCH. All data were computed in Day Of the Year (DOY). The score 3 (leaf unfolding), when young leaves starting to emerge from the upper part of the bud was considered the bud break and the start of the growing season, while the score 7 (leaf colouring), when the leaf colour yellowing, was computed as the end of the growing season The length of the growing season was computed as the difference between scores 7 and 3.The in situ monitoring was used to calibrate a remote sensing approach to estimate leaf phenophases from Copernicus Sentinel 1 radar satellite. This method was used to estimate phenophases in all plats for the entire period of observation before and after the silvicultural treatments.The phenological data was compared in relation to altitude, aspect, main climatic factors (air temperature and precipitation in the four sectors) and silvicultural treatments.Significant differences were resulted from the effect of different factors particularly comparing the growth season length.

V International Walnut Symposium, 2005

Research on the possibility for walnut (J. regia) to be exploited as tree species suitable for fo... more Research on the possibility for walnut (J. regia) to be exploited as tree species suitable for forestry plantations, recently had a lot of impulses from the Italian Agricultural Ministry and, specifically, with the promotion of the Riselvitalia project. In the framework of the above mentioned project the "Istituto Sperimentale per la Selvicoltura" of Arezzo has developed a research aimed at the exploitation of some selections of a J. nigra population, identified in North Italy and characterized by a spontaneous inter-specific crossing ability with J. regia. The Persian walnut grows slowly with respect to J. nigra that, on the other hand, produces lower quality wood comparing to J. regia. Because of the difficulty in Juglans propagation, the "Istituto Sperimentale per la Frutticoltura" of Rome, due to its specific knowledge on grafting research of Juglans spp, was involved in the project. In the winter 2001 wood material was collected from the mother trees to test their propagating ability. Two grafting techniques were adopted: the Hot callusing in the winter and the Top grafting in the spring-summer. Wood-scion material collected from 20 (of the 23 selections) were grafted on walnut seedlings populations of "Bleggiana", "Monti Lessini", "Val Maira" and "Val Parma". Results were influenced by the poor phytosanitary condition of the mother plants and by the genotypes.

Forest@ - Rivista di Selvicoltura ed Ecologia Forestale, 2006

Management of genetic resources in the nursery system of wild cherry (Prunus avium L.). Knowledge... more Management of genetic resources in the nursery system of wild cherry (Prunus avium L.). Knowledge of genetic and adaptive traits of reproductive materials used in the nursery system of wild cherry, could be an useful instrument to improve ecological and economic sustainability of plantation ecosystems. This work reports results from a research which the objectives were: 1) to study the genetic variation of a Prunus avium L. population, used for seed harvesting, through its multi-locus genotypes detected by starch gel electrophoresis; 2) to analyze the level of genetic variation within and among different steps in a commercial nursery system (basic population and sub-populations, seedlings aged S 1 T 1 and S 1 T 2 , plantation). Results showed low genetic variation levels of the basic population, similar to a reference system of other 12 wild cherry Italian populations and to other French and Caucasian materials. The genetic distances among Monte Baldo and some closer Lombardy provenances (Area Garda, Bosco Fontana, Valtellina) were smaller than the Venice Region populations (Monti Lessini and Asiago). Number of alleles and percentage of polymorphic loci within the complex of Monte Baldo provenance and multiplication materials were similar, whilst a variable value of Fis was noted. Indeed, along with the nursery system until the plantation, heterozygosis initially (S 1 T 1) increased, then decreased proceeding to the plantation. This fluctuation of F IS values could be determined by seed lots characterized initially by higher levels of variation, due to self-incompatibility. In the following steps, a possible selection pressure can affect randomly the genotypic structure of wild cherry by increasing the homozygosity. There is not among population a well defined geographic characterization, as suggested by genetic distances, therefore homogeneous seed harvest could be established an area larger than geographic and administrative borders. On this way we could have reproductive material with a wide genetic base and environmental adaptability. To increase variability in the progenies, populations characterised by wider cross pollination rates should be selected, harvest seed by all plants of population, reduce selection on seedlings during nursery growth.