Identifying social ecological key variables in the beech coppice forest system in Central Italian Apennine. Paper to the international workshop Perspectives on Forest Conservation - Tackling the Frontier between Policy and Conservation Science. Reviewed.

This project evaluates socio-ecological aspects of the beech forest coppice system in the Marche region (Central Italy). The forested uplands under investigation are characterized by a highly fragmented ownership structure, with many small forest units which were historically deployed to coppicing rotation. Conversion to non-coppiced forest was believed to be beneficial for conservation of beech forest specialist species; instead recent evidences show that a mosaic of exploited and non exploited patches is as adequate and probably better at conserving forest specialists species diversity. Additionally, structural and compositional vegetation samplings were performed to test whether vascular species changes occurred between 2006 and 2011. In total 57 (20x20mt) beech forest plots were investigated. Results shows that community changes have occurred between the 5 years, in particular the differences are driven by changes in tree canopy cover, substrate and aspect while official age since last coppice (Based on the registers of the National Forest Service) did not result significant. Understanding how to maintain a human-generated landscape mosaic in this system, at risk of abandonment due to social and economic factors, is important to promote its biodiversity. Little is known about the perceptions, constraints and the norms governing interactions of forest users (cutters), resource units and resource system. Unstructured and structured social surveys to uncover and identify social-ecological key management variables were performed. Presence and condition of forestry road, mean diameter, height of suckers and effective age of the forest stand (based on the diameter of suckers evaluated in field survey) are considered by the cutters the most important variables taken into account to choose the forest stand and obtain an evaluation of the productivity and use of it. Furthermore, a forest stand of 25-30 years was associated to those variables. Insights on the relationships coupling the social and the ecological system suggest possible resilience mechanism of understory functional diversity related to diffuse ecological knowledge and management practices.