SilvaCuore: a web-application to monitor the health status of Italian forests

doi:10.3832/ifor4562-017

SilvaCuore: a web-application to monitor the health status of Italian forests

Maria Castellaneta⁽¹⁾ , Michele Colangelo⁽¹⁾, Giacomo Colle⁽²⁾, Angelo Rita⁽³⁾, Francesco Ripullone⁽¹⁾

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 17, Issue 5, Pages 317-322 (2024)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor4562-017
Published: Sep 30, 2024 - Copyright © 2024 SISEF

Review Papers

Collection/Special Issue: Project LIFE MODERn(NEC)
Workshop "Climate change and forest health monitoring in Italy" - Rome (Italy) May 5, 2023
Guest Editors: Bussotti F, Pollastrini M

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In the current context of climate change, this paper provides a brief overview of climate-vegetation interactions in the Mediterranean basin, where global warming and aridification trends are predicted to intensify. Rising temperatures coupled with extreme drought events have notable impacts on forest ecosystems, triggering dieback and mortality phenomena worldwide. The health status of forest vegetation may be assessed by either ground surveys or remote sensing. Several investigations of declining oak forests in the Apennine region have shown that the drought vulnerability of Mediterranean oaks is dependent on differences in access to deep soil water pools, which can be related to differences in rooting depth, tree size and growth rate. Forest dieback is widely reported in Italy, but the extent and overall distribution of this phenomenon have not yet been well defined. Thus, understanding the future dynamics of forest stands has several key objectives: inventorying declining forest stands to gain insight into the phenomenon and create a national-level database; locating these stands to allow monitoring of their evolution over time; and monitoring to allow planning of mitigation measures, as well as recovery and adaptation strategies. This background led to the implementation of SilvaCuore, the first web application designed in Italy to report forest health status. Silvacuore is a web application developed with the aim of improving the link between citizens and the scientific community by contributing to the development of a valuable scientific database. The direct involvement of citizens in forest preservation offers an interesting perspective because the innovative use of technology can tap into citizens’ growing enthusiasm for environmental topics. Thus, SilvaCuore may be viewed from a dual perspective as a resource for the scientific community and as a unique opportunity for citizens to take an active role in research activities (Citizen Science project).

Keywords

Climate Change, Citizen Science, Drought, Forest Dieback, Mediterranean Environment

Authors’ address

(1)

0000-0002-6401-620X
0000-0002-6687-3125
0000-0003-4851-3422
Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie, Forestali, Alimentari e dell’Ambiente, Università della Basilicata, Potenza (Italy)

(2)

0000-0002-3166-1755
Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria, Via della Navicella 2/4, Roma (Italy)

(3)

0000-0002-6579-7925
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università di Napoli Federico II, via Università 100, 80055 Portici, NA (Italy)

Corresponding author

Maria Castellaneta
maria.castellaneta@unibas.it

Citation

Castellaneta M, Colangelo M, Colle G, Rita A, Ripullone F (2024). SilvaCuore: a web-application to monitor the health status of Italian forests. iForest 17: 317-322. - doi: 10.3832/ifor4562-017

Academic Editor

Martina Pollastrini

Paper history

Received: Jan 16, 2024
Accepted: Jul 26, 2024

First online: Sep 30, 2024
Publication Date: Oct 31, 2024
Publication Time: 2.20 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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