Are we ready for a National Forest Information System? State of the art of forest maps and airborne laser scanning data availability in Italy

doi:10.3832/ifor3648-014

Are we ready for a National Forest Information System? State of the art of forest maps and airborne laser scanning data availability in Italy

Giovanni D’Amico⁽¹⁾ , Elia Vangi^(1-2), Saverio Francini^(1-2-3), Francesca Giannetti^(1-4-5), Antonino Nicolaci⁽⁶⁾, Davide Travaglini⁽¹⁾, Lorenzo Massai^(4-5), Yamuna Giambastiani^(4-5-7), Carlo Terranova⁽⁸⁾, Gherardo Chirici^(1-5)

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 14, Issue 2, Pages 144-154 (2021)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor3648-014
Published: Mar 23, 2021 - Copyright © 2021 SISEF

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Forest planning, forest management, and forest policy require updated, reliable, and harmonized spatial datasets. In Italy a national geographic Forest Information System (FIS) designed to store and facilitate the access and analysis of spatial datasets is still missing. Among the different information layers which are useful to start populating a FIS, two are essential for their multiple use in the assessment of forest resources: (i) forest mapping, and (ii) data from Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS). Both layers are not available wall-to-wall for Italy, though different local sources of information potentially useful for their implementation already exist. The objectives of this work were to: (i) review forest maps and ALS data availability in Italy; (ii) develop for the first time a high resolution forest mask of Italy which was validated against the official statistics of the Italian National Forest Inventory; (iii) develop the first mosaic of all the main ALS data available in Italy producing a consistent Canopy Height Model (CHM). An on-line geographic FIS with free access to both layers from (ii) and (iii) was developed for demonstration purposes. The total area of forest and other wooded lands computed from the forest mask was 102.608.82 km² (34% of the Italian territory), i.e., 1.9% less than the NFI benchmark estimate. This map is currently the best wall-to-wall forest mask available for Italy. We showed that only the 63% of the Italian territory (the 60% of the forest area) is covered by ALS data. These results highlight the urgent need for a national strategy to complete the availability of forest data in Italy.

Keywords

National Datasets, Forest Inventory, Forest Monitoring, Forest Mask, Airborne Laser Scanning, LiDAR

Authors’ address

(1)

0000-0002-2341-3268
0000-0002-9772-2258
0000-0001-6991-0289
0000-0002-4590-827X
0000-0003-0706-2653
0000-0002-0669-5726
Dept. of Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry (DAGRI), University of Florence, v. San Bonaventura, 13, 50145 Florence (Italy)

(2)

0000-0002-9772-2258
0000-0001-6991-0289
Dept. of Bioscience and Territory (DiBT), University of Molise, c.da Fonte Lappone, I-86090 Pesche, IS (Italy)

(3)

0000-0001-6991-0289
Dept. of Innovation in Biological, Agro-Food and Forest System (DIBAF), University of Tuscia, v. San Camillo de Lellis, I-01100 Viterbo (Italy)

(4)

0000-0002-4590-827X
0000-0002-8252-0549
0000-0002-3613-2975
Bluebiloba startup Innovativa s.r.l., v. C. Salutati 78, 50126 Florence (Italy)

(5)

0000-0002-4590-827X
0000-0002-8252-0549
0000-0002-3613-2975
0000-0002-0669-5726
ForTech, University of Florence joint laboratory, v. San Bonaventura 13, 50145 Florence (Italy)

(6)

Dept. of Computer Engineering, Modeling, Electronics, and Systems Science (DIMES), University of Calabria, v. P. Bucci 41C, I-87036 Rende, CS (Italy)

(7)

0000-0002-3613-2975
LAMMA Consortium - Environmental Modelling and Monitoring Laboratory for Sustainable Development, Florence (Italy)

(8)

Geoportale Nazionale, Italian Ministry of the Environment, v. Cristoforo Colombo 44, 00147 Rome (Italy)

Corresponding author

Giovanni D’Amico
giovanni.damico@unifi.it

Citation

D’Amico G, Vangi E, Francini S, Giannetti F, Nicolaci A, Travaglini D, Massai L, Giambastiani Y, Terranova C, Chirici G (2021). Are we ready for a National Forest Information System? State of the art of forest maps and airborne laser scanning data availability in Italy. iForest 14: 144-154. - doi: 10.3832/ifor3648-014

Academic Editor

Matteo Garbarino

Paper history

Received: Sep 07, 2020
Accepted: Feb 18, 2021

First online: Mar 23, 2021
Publication Date: Apr 30, 2021
Publication Time: 1.10 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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