ALPFOR-CSF

Last updated on May 15, 2026

Project duration

2025 - ongoing

Project overview

ALPFOR-CSF: Climate Smart Forestry and management adaptations of Alpine mountain forests

ALPFOR-CSF is a research project funded with a third-party grant in the framework of FORWARDS, a large collaborative project funded by the European Union that will prototype the ForestWard Observatory, a pan-European monitoring and evaluation tool that will help in demonstrating the impact of climate change on forests, guiding decision-making for practical forest management. As part of its activities, FORWARDS has been establishing a network of climate smart forestry (CSF) and restoration pilots to provide science-based reference knowledge to guide forest management.

The objective of ALPFOR-CSF is to establish new field trials for long-term forest monitoring to assess the impact of climate smart forestry and adaptive management practices in forests of the Italian Alps. Our trials within three study areas cover several aspects of CSF in the Alps, such as the implementation of adaptations to management interventions in Norway spruce stands for composition enrichment and structure diversification to promote ecosystem functioning and improving the trade-off among timber production, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. In both control and CSF treatments, important variables will be collected pre- and post-treatment execution at both stand- and tree-level, such as diameter, tree locations, canopy structure, soil carbon, microclimate, deadwood amount, tree microhabitats, and regeneration. Ground- and UAV-based photogrammetry will be used to collect forest structure at stand-level data, while dendrometers and inventory-based methods will be used to monitor forest growth at the tree-level. These variables will be used to derive indicators of climate smart forestry and to quantify the potential for carbon mitigation of such practices. Simulation modelling will also be applied to predict future stand development under climate change. Finally, we will conduct a survey among the forest services regarding their perception on adaptive forest management and maintain an open data repository that will feed into the FORWARDS database.

Methodology

Field trials are set in two forest stands in Norway spruce-dominated mountain forests of the Dolomites in the province of South Tyrol, Italy. The first one is located in the proximity of the Nigrerpass/Passo Nigra, between the Tierstal/val di Tires and the Karerpass/Passo di Carezza, at 1680 m a.s.l., and it is surrounded by areas recently disturbed by the Vaia storm. The second one is located in the Funes valley/Villnosstal, at also 1700 m a.s.l., near the Naturpark Puez-Geisler. Both sites are mainly dominated by Norway spruce and present a high density in terms of tree number requiring critical intervention. In each trial, two separate portion of the stand will be treated with two different type of thinning interventions: traditional vs climate-smart forestry (CSF). CSF interventions focus on increasing structural heterogeneity, diversifying species composition, and enhancing deadwood to support ecosystem services and forest adaptation to climate stressors like drought.

Forest responses to different treatments will be quantified with multiple data collected at two levels: stand-level (entire trial surface, 1-2 ha) and tree-level (sampling plots). Measurements include forest structure, species composition, site conditions, canopy properties via ground-based and UAV LiDAR and imagery, tree growth via dendrometers, soil carbon content, microclimate monitoring, deadwood biomass, and regeneration. These comprehensive datasets enable calculation of CSF indicators and evaluation of ecosystem service provisioning. In a second step, a forest simulation model will applied to predict future forest dynamics under climate change scenarios.

The project is implementated in four work packages (WP).

WP1. Project management and Dissemination Coordinates activities, prepares reports, and organizes scientific dissemination and a workshop with forest managers.
WP2. CSF Protocol Development and Treatment Execution Develops operational CSF protocols for silvicultural treatments in the field trials and oversees their implementation by the Provincial Forest Services of state-owned forests.
WP3. Field Data Collection Conducts two consecutive seasons of detailed field measurements using in situ sensors and close range remote sensing, including installation of dendrometers and microclimate loggers.
WP4.Data Analysis, Modeling, and Management Survey Processes and organizes data into an open-access database, derives CSF indicators, runs forest dynamic simulations, and conducts a survey among forest managers to assess perceptions and feasibility of CSF approaches.