SESSION 2

SILVICULTURE, FOREST FIRES, GRAZING
(Coordinators: Giovanni Bovio, Enrico Marchi)

In Italy, such as in other large areas of the world, forest fires represent one of the major threats to forests, infrastructures, and people.

Many actions are carried out in order to prevent and control forest fires. Nevertheless, forest fires still continue to represent a serious and topical problem, especially in those environments like the wildland-urban interface, which are more and more diffuse and which may be deeply damaged from fire. The 2007 fire season is a proof of this. Furthermore, general negative consequences at the environmental level, and the emission of pollutants in the atmosphere as well, have to be considered.   

All fire effects need improvements of organization in controlling them, both at the national and international level. Scientific research on this topic may and must furnish useful indications to define the most efficient policies for the protection of forests, ecosystems and landscape values, which are essential for local and global development.

Forest and environment management and protection cannot be efficient without the development of national and international policies on forest fires management and control.

Forest and pastoral resources are very similar ecosystems if their floristic composition complexity is considered, and both combine economic production with environment protection. Interactions between those two resources are characterized by delicate balances. In the past they generated a conflictual relationship that may be resolved through appropriate planning and careful management.

Themes:

1. Forest fires

Fire fighting planning

Fire impact on forests

Wildland-urban interface fires

Fire ecology

Fire and biodiversity

Risk analysis

Danger prevision

Prevention

Extinction

Prescribed burning

Fire and climate change

Restoration of burned areas

Education and indirect prevention

2. Grazing

Dynamism between pastoral and forest resources

Grazing inside forest and forest conservation

Pastoral and forest resources planning

Forests, grazing and relationship with local people