Marco Ferretti

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL | WSL · Forest Resources and Management Research Unit

Forests are increasingly affected by global change. Building resilient forests requires – amongst others - leveraging the wealth of knowledge from existing ground-based, field inventory and monitoring programs as well as Earth Observation systems to better assess the status, detect changes, understand processes, predict future dynamics, and guide f...

Forest soils harbor hyper-diverse microbial communities which fundamentally regulate carbon and nutrient cycling across the globe. Directly testing hypoth- eses on how microbiome diversity is linked to forest carbon storage has been difficult, due to a lack of paired data on microbiome diversity and in situ observations of forest carbon accumulatio...

Forests are under pressure and going through rapid changes. However, current inventorying and monitoring (IM) programs are often either disjointed, too narrow in their scope and/or do not operate at fine enough temporal resolutions, which may hinder scientific understanding, the timely supply of information, fast decision making, and may result in...

Air Pollution Effects on Forests (ICP Forests) spanning over five European biogeographic regions from 2005 to 2018. Average values for VFS were calculated accounting for the number of species present and their observed frequency. Spatial and temporal variation of ozone concentrations, VFS, and their relationships across Europe were then investigate...

Tree cores are a highly valuable scientific resource. Annual growth ring data can, for example, improve our understanding of climate change impacts and effects of environmental pollution, allow for better annual estimations of tree growth patterns and carbon storage, and help quantify dynamics and changes in forest ecosystems. The value of coring t...

The effects of tree pollen on precipitation chemistry are not fully understood and this can lead to misinterpretations of element deposition in European forests. We investigated the relationship between forest throughfall (TF) element fluxes and the Seasonal Pollen Integral (SPIn) using linear mixed-effects modelling (LME). TF was measured in 1990–...

Forests deliver many ecosystem services, from provisioning to regulating and cultural services. We aimed at demonstrating microclimatic regulation and pollutant removal as especially relevant ecosystem services when considering the tourism vocation of the Alpine regions. A study was realized along an altitudinal gradient (900–1600 m a.s.l.) in Tren...

The year 2022 was a time of great changes in Annals of Forest Science. We moved from a hybrid to a full Open Access publication model with BMC-Springer. This means that our authors are full owners of the articles , at the price of a quite moderate article processing charges (APC) which is sometimes covered by general agreements between institutions...

Key message Our results indicate that nitrogen deposition is likely to adversely affect forest bryophyte communities, having negative impacts in terms of increased dominance of nitrophilic species at the expense of N-sensitive species and a decrease in evenness. Context Elevated atmospheric deposition of nitrogen (N) has long been recognised as a...

The assessment of Visible Foliar Symptoms (VFS) is commonly adopted by forest monitoring programs to evaluate ozone impact on vegetation. The occurrence of ozone VFS may differ among individuals of the same species at the same site, and within leaves of the same individual. The aim of this study was to identify site and plant characteristics as wel...

We have the pleasure to announce here a new step in the already long history of Annals of Forest Science (formerly Annales des Sciences Forestières, founded 1964). Since January 1, 2022, Annals of Forest Science is published under a full open access model. It joins two other INRAE journals within the BMC-Springer Open Access publishing scheme: Vete...

Bark beetle infestation is a major driver of tree mortality that may be critical for forest persistence under climate change and the forecasted increase of extreme heat and drought episodes. Under this context, the environmental position of host tree populations within the species' climatic niche (central vs. marginal populations) is expected to be...

Most trees form symbioses with ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) which influence access to growth-limiting soil resources. Mesocosm experiments repeatedly show that EMF species differentially affect plant development, yet whether these effects ripple up to influence the growth of entire forests remains unknown. Here we tested the effects of EMF compositi...

• By killing or weakening trees, drought could change the partitioning of growth between tree sizes or species, thereby altering stand structure. Growth partitioning, often quantified using the growth dominance coefficient (DC) or the shape of tree size versus growth relationships (SGR), indicates the relative contribution of differently sized tree...

ICP Forests has monitored the European forests since the late 1980s. This Brief describes temporal and spatial developments in tree defoliation, a widely adopted indicator of forest health and vitality. The defoliation data were obtained from the transnational crown condition surveys (ICP Forests Level I) carried out annually between 1990 and 2019...

Although several manipulative experiments provided evidence for a negative effect of defoliation on tree growth, results from observational studies were less univocal. This may be due to the ability of observed defoliation to reflect the health status of individual trees, to the influence of site condition and to the amplitude of time window used f...

Key message Future international forest monitoring should build upon the existing pan-European programs. There is a renewed interest in the monitoring of European forests. Future monitoring systems should build upon existing international programs, making use of their strengths and solving their weaknesses. This approach will result into win–win so...

Climate-smart forestry (CSF) has gained increasing attention in recent years. Yet, a framework to assess the three pillars of CSF, in terms of mitigation and adaptation to climate change and ecosystem service (ES) provision based on national forest inventory (NFI) data is currently lacking. In this study, we present an assessment framework of CSF b...

Although coppice forests represent a significant part of the European forest area, especially across southern Countries, they received little attention within the Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) processes and scenarios, whose guidelines have been mainly designed to high forests and national scale. In order to obtain “tailored” information on th...

To improve the design-based precision of gross increment estimates from forest inventories, we propose an assessment of an expanded set of auxiliary information grouped from five sources: (i) a vegetation height model, (ii) satellite imagery, (iii) spatial data, (iv) topography, and (v) variables identified by external forest monitoring and researc...

Climate and weather fluctuations and changes are the most important environmental driver of tree canopy defoliation, an indicator of forest health. We examined the relationship between tree defoliation and Basal Area Increment (BAI), a dimension of tree growth related to wood biomass increment, carbon sequestration and therefore to the climate chan...

Changes in regional and global hydrological cycles and temperature regimes will affect forest health, functioning and growth, and therefore their role in carbon (C) sequestration. A severe spring-summer drought hit large parts of central Europe in 2018 leading locally to premature leaf senescence in deciduous tree species. In late summer 2018 and 2...

Criterion 2 considers and quantifies the exposure, risk, and impact on forest health posed by biotic and abiotic stressors. Environmental conditions, such as air and soil quality, influence the health and vitality of forest ecosystem and, subsequently, the provision of forest products and services. Appropriate management practices can improve the c...

Wood fuel has become central in environmental policy and decision-making processes in cross-sectoral areas. Proper consideration of different types of woody biomass is fundamental in forming energy transition and decarbonization strategies. We quantified the development of theoretical (TPs) and sustainable (SPs) potentials of wood fuel from forests...

Tree crown defoliation is the most widespread indicator of forest health and vitality in Europe. It is part of the ICP Forests Pan-European survey and it is adopted for reporting under Forest Europe. It is readily understandable and can count on fairly harmonized, long-term, large-scale data series across Europe. On the other hand, it is unspecific...

Changing environmental conditions may substantially interact with site quality and forest stand characteristics, and impact forest growth and carbon sequestration. Understanding the impact of the various drivers of forest growth is therefore critical to predict how forest ecosystems can respond to climate change. We conducted a continental-scale an...

The response of forest productivity to climate extremes strongly depends on ambient environmental and site conditions. To better understand these relationships at a regional scale, we used nearly 800 observation years from 271 permanent long‐term forest monitoring plots across Switzerland, obtained between 1980 and 2017. We assimilated these data i...

Forests play a major role in the global carbon cycle. Previous studies on the capacity of forests to sequester atmospheric CO 2 have mostly focused on carbon uptake, but the roles of carbon turnover time and its spatiotemporal changes remain poorly understood. Here, we used long-term inventory data (1955 to 2018) from 695 mature forest plots to qua...

Die Bilder grossflächig brauner Laubbäume in weiten Teilen der Schweiz sowie Zentraleuropas im Frühsommer 2018 sind uns noch sehr präsent. Diese um rund drei Monate verfrühte Herbstverfärbung der Wälder war das Resultat der extremen Hitze und langanhaltenden Dürre. Auch wenn das Ausmass und die Sichtbarkeit der Schäden in Wald und Landwirtschaft 20...

Key messages: Ozone is a gaseous air pollutant present in remote areas at levels causing visible symptoms in plants. Despite a significant reduction, ozone levels at ICP Forests sites still exceed the threshold value for adverse effects. Ozone-induced foliar symptoms have been observed on woody plant species all across Europe. Further observational...

ICP Forests Briefs aim to provide clear and concise information on the ICP Forests monitoring programme and its latest scientific findings. These short updates are primarily directed at policymakers and the interested public offering them scientific knowledge for an informed debate on key forest-related environmental topics. Key messages of ICP Fo...

A 5-year project was carried out over the period 2007–2011 to estimate the potential and actual ozone effect on forests in Trentino, Northern Italy (6207 km²) (Ozone EFFORT). The objective was to provide explicit answers to three main questions: (i) is there a potential risk placed by ozone to vegetation? (ii) are there specific ozone symptoms on v...

We investigated the significance of tropospheric ozone as a factor explaining recent tree health (in terms of defoliation) and productivity (in terms of Basal Area Increment, BAI) in 15 ICP Forests Level I and one Level II plots in Alpine forests in Trentino (N. Italy). Mean daily ozone summer concentrations varied between 30-72 parts per billion (...

The phytotoxic impacts of tropospheric ozone on cellular and molecular processes are increasingly understood and quantified. They generally lead to a decrease in plant carbon uptake that is mainly detectable at leaf scale. At larger scales, most of the empirical and modelling studies reported negative ozone effects on productivity, but the latest e...

We used data from representatively sampled trees to identify key drivers of tree growth for central European tree species. Nonlinear mixed models were fitted to individual-tree basal area increments (BAI) from the Swiss national forest inventory. Data from 1983 to 2006 were used for model fitting and data from 2009 to 2013 for model evaluation. We...

The frequency of Viburnum lantana L. plants showing visible foliar symptoms (VFS) was assessed in Trentino, north Italy in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2015. The assessment was based on a sub-sample (n = 10) of the ViburNeT observation plots network installed in 2010 according to a stratified random design. Depending on the year, a range of 193–232 plants...

Manual to implement a pilot study. Developed within the ICP Forests Expert Panel on Ambient Air Quality

Forest health surveys in Europe are based on visual assessment of the reduction of the density of foliage on tree crown, termed crown transparency. This attribute has been criticized because its unclear relationship with tree physiological status and the need for more objective indicators of tree health has been frequently claimed. Chlorophyll a fl...

Il Manuale descrive le procedure per ottenere dati relativi a “nuovi” indicatori per valutare lo stato di salute e vitalità degli alberi in chiave funzionale. Documento del progetto LIFE FutureForCoppiceS, Azione B.2

The significance of crown transparency as forest health indicator has been frequently challenged. Here we examined crown transparency together with damage, crown productivity (shoot length) and leaf traits (needle weight, O and C stable isotopes, chlorophyll a fluorescence) on 9-27 Picea abies (L.) H. Karst. trees along an elevation gradient in Tre...

Activity under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) focuses on developing and implementing clean air policies across Europe and North America. There has been great success in reducing sulphur emissions over the past decades, but the concentration of nitrogen (N) compounds in the atmosphere, the level of N deposite...

Indicator 2.1 Deposition of air pollutants The deposition of nitrogen, sea-salt corrected sulphate sulphur, sea-salt corrected calcium, and sea-salt corrected magnesium vary across the different regions of Europe. Nitrogen – both ammonium (N-NH4) and nitrate nitrogen (N-NO3) – predominates in Central-West Europe and some parts of South Europe. The...

Key messageAtmospheric deposition of nitrogen compounds and soil and foliar variables related to N deposition resulted important factors accounting for the variability of defoliation in European forest plots.ContextNitrogen (N) deposition has increased in the northern hemisphere because of anthropogenic-related emission of N compounds. Increased N...

Abstract to the presentation held by Marcus Schaub in Nice, at IUFRO Nice 2015 - Global Challenges of Air Pollution and Climate Change to Forests

Abstract to the key not presentation held by Marcus Schaub at the 4th ICP Forests Scientific Conference

Context. Traditionally, forest monitoring networks have been designed to assess status and trends of forest condition. We argue that they can help providing answers to a much broader range of questions for science, policy and society. Here we concentrate on the example of ground level ozone pollution. Aims. To demonstrate the value of present fores...

The value of a monitoring programme for the management of ecological resources, and interpretation of the role of environmental drivers, relies on its ability to detect change. Semboli et al. 2014 (Applied Vegetation Science 17: 737-743, this issue) show that the simple act of repeated measuring significantly affects species composition in permanen...

We studied forest monitoring data collected at permanent plots in Italy over the period 2000-2009 to identify the possible impact of nitrogen (N) deposition on soil chemistry, tree nutrition and growth. Average N throughfall (N-NO3 +N-NH4 ) ranged between 4 and 29 kg ha(-1) yr(-1) , with Critical Loads (CLs) for nutrient N exceeded at several sites...

Vegetation-related response variables adopted in the ICP Forests are related to health, growth, phenology, and diversity. Their assessment and measurement is subject to errors, which need to be controlled and documented. To do this, data quality requirements (DQRs) and intercomparison exercises were implemented. During 2009 and 2010, 111–260 field...

The circumference of trees in the CONECOFOR permanent monitoring plots (PMPs) were measured by three surveys carried out in 1997, 2000 and 2005. Plots were arranged into forest types according to tree species, management system and stand structure: beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and spruce (Picea abies K.) high forests, aged coppice forests and transit...

Since 1995 the CONECOFOR programme is collecting data on a number of attributes of forest ecosystems in 20 permanent plots in Italy. In this paper, different multivariate methods were used to detect possible changes and deviations in the overall biological and chemical-physical status of the CONECOFOR plots as compared to defined reference periods....