Between January and February 2023, a portion of the Bosco di San Francesco in Assisi underwent coppice cutting, to improve vegetative conditions and enhance the different functions of the forest in a balanced – and therefore more sustainable – way.

Since 2008, between the Basilica di San Francesco, the Tescio River and the Benedictine Complex of Santa Croce in Assisi, the FAI has been operating one of the first examples of landscape restoration in Italy, through the restoration of natural, historical and cultural elements, enhancing the agrarian and forestry environment that characterises this corner of Umbria: the Bosco di San Francesco.

ACTIVE MANAGEMENT OF FOREST RESOURCES

Forests are a common good, linked to the history and culture of our territories. The future of our country also depends on how we perceive, protect and manage this heritage that represents 35% of the Italian territory. Forests and their management are a decisive tool for limiting hydrogeological risk, combating climate change, safeguarding biodiversity and the landscape, and purifying and regulating water. They are also a fundamental and renewable resource for the socio-economic development of rural and mountain areas and of the country system.

On the other hand, they are increasingly subject to new pressures and potential elements of destabilisation linked to climate change, fires,  parasites, and unsustainable forms of use and management, such as over-exploitation or non-management or abandonment, especially of mountain and marginal areas.

In this complex context, the need to pay attention to active management in the protection of the land, natural resources and biodiversity is therefore increasingly pressing.

The forest management project carried out at the Bosco di San Francesco, drafted by Studio RDM, specialised in forest and environmental management, involved the wooded slope that runs from the Upper Basilica of San Francesco down to the Benedictine Complex of Santa Croce in recent months. The intervention had mainly conservation and landscape purposes, as it was aimed at enhancing in a balanced – and therefore more sustainable – way the different functions of the forest, i.e. the ecosystem services it offers: protective services (prevention of hydro-geological risks), naturalistic services (habitat of plant and animal species), cultural and recreational services (landscape, natural spaces) provided to the community.

FRANCISCANS AND BENEDICTINES

The philological recovery carried out by FAI has enhanced a forest management influenced by two important religious orders: the Franciscans and the Benedictines, who conditioned the development of the Bosco di San Francesco in different ways.

For the Franciscans, work was not a priority as much as contact with the people, preaching and alms-giving. Consequently, the forest was managed according to the needs of self-consumption alone without any economic purpose. For example, timber was not obtained by felling the tree, but by cutting the branches so that they could grow back again. This management approach can be read in the section of forest known as the ‘Selva di San Francesco‘, owned by the Sacro Convento. There we find numerous tall trees such as downy oaks, turkey oaks and various species of maples.

In contrast, the Benedictines recognised that work was equal in dignity with prayer and study, and by taking a vow of economic stability, they ‘tamed’ nature, guiding it for the benefit of the community. These practices profoundly transformed the forest landscape around the abbeys, giving the Benedictine order the role of forerunner of silviculture in our country. This management approach can be read in the stretch of forest owned by FAI and is characterised by an aged coppice, i.e. last cut probably about 50 years ago and where the trees are therefore all more or less the same age. Here we find predominantly black hornbeam and, further down the valley, downy oak and ash, flanked by olive groves.

IMPROVING THE VEGETATIVE CONDITION OF THE FOREST

The area of the cutting intervention is a forest consisting mainly of black hornbeam (Ostrya carpinifolia) with downy oak (Quercus pubescens), maple (Acer sp.) and manna ash (Fraxinus ornus), which we have said is an aged coppice.

In this area, the FAI intervened to secure the very steep slope in the area of the boundary wall where there are numerous suffering hornbeam stumps, with most of the larger suckers now completely dry and strongly inclined towards the valley, and where numerous medium to large-sized downy oaks have collapsed. The causes of the decay are linked to combined factors such as senescence and climate change, in particular rising temperatures and reduced water availability. Recent studies on hornbeams and downy oaks have shown a strong correlation between the succession of drought years and the symptoms found in the area.

The forest management project implemented is based on the assumption that maintaining a high degree of intermixing between plant species reduces the risk of disasters that lead to the loss of the forest’s bio-ecological functions, since pure forests, i.e. made up of trees predominantly of the same species, are much more vulnerable than mixed forests.

In fact, the presence of more tree species increases soil fertility, diversifies and enhances ecosystem services (the provision of benefits to society), provides greater variability of ecological niches (i.e. the space and function that species occupy in a given habitat) for animal species, and improves the resilience of the ecosystem that is fundamental for combating climate change.

This improves the adaptation of affected plant species to climate change by enhancing the biodiversity of the area. The cut will reduce the presence of hornbeam, a species that suffers most from the changed environmental conditions, thus reducing the effects of slope erosion and speeding up the rotation of species, such as ash, downy oak and maple, that are better adapted to the current climate conditions.

It is noteworthy that these interventions are not intended to produce an economic return but to strengthen the forest’s degree of biodiversity. In perspective, the regenerated forest will also be able to sequester and store more carbon dioxide, thus lowering the Foundation’s carbon footprint.

The portion of the forest affected by the coppicing operation now has large trees in excellent condition that can provide food and shelter for the animal species living in the forest. The structural complexity of the ecosystem and the amount of biomass present has also improved because the large plants play a fundamental role in guaranteeing abundant seed production and thus ensuring the forest’s renewal in the long term.

The waste from the cuts made has been left on the ground to provide food and shelter for small animals (insects, arthropods, micro-mammals and small birds) and enrich the forest soil with material that will naturally turn into humus over time.