Renzo Motta

Università degli Studi di Torino | UNITO · Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences

With ongoing global warming, increasing water deficits promote physiological stress on forest ecosystems with negative impacts on tree growth, vitality, and survival. How individual tree species will react to increased drought stress is therefore a key research question to address for carbon accounting and the development of climate change mitigati...

The fundamental trade‐off between current and future reproduction has long been considered to result in a tendency for species that can grow large to begin reproduction at a larger size. Due to the prolonged time required to reach maturity, estimates of tree maturation size remain very rare and we lack a global view on the generality and the shape...

Time series analysis of medium-resolution multispectral satellite imagery is critical to investigate forest disturbance dynamics at the landscape scale. In particular, the spatial, temporal, and radiometric consistency of Landsat time series data provides unprecedented insight into past disturbances that occurred over the last four decades. Several...

Carbon accounting in the land sector requires a reference level from which to calculate past losses of carbon and potential for gains using a stock-based target. Carbon carrying capacity represented by the carbon stock in primary forests is an ecologically-based reference level that allows estimation of the mitigation potential derived from protect...

Background Carbon (C) sink and stock are among the most important ecosystem services provided by forests in climate change mitigation policies. In this context, old-growth forests constitute an essential reference point for the development of close-to-nature silviculture, including C management techniques. Despite their small extent in Europe, temp...

Wildfires represent a critical environmental and social challenge, with long-term implications for human health, ecosystems, and infrastructure. This complex issue is exacerbated by various factors, including socioeconomic changes, unsustainable practices in agro-forestry land management, and the intensifica-tion of extreme weather events. The comp...

The future performance of the widely abundant European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) across its ecological amplitude is uncertain. Although beech is considered drought-sensitive and thus negatively affected by drought events, scientific evidence indicating increasing drought vulnerability under climate change on a cross-regional scale remains elusive....

Introduction According to various censuses, Europe has less than 1.5 million ha of old-growth forests (OGF). Most of them are in the boreal zone, while their presence in the temperate zone is residual and fragmented.In the framework of the EU biodiversity strategy, it has been adopted a broad definition of OGF which includes late-seral forests and...

Species-rich mixed silver fir ( Abies alba Mill.) forests dominated in the northern Apennines, but climate and, mainly, anthropogenic land use provoked a sharp silver fir decline approximately 5000 years bp. The conservation of the silver fir in this region was mainly due to the establishment of monastic orders that preserved and even planted silve...

Tree regeneration is a key demographic process influencing long‐term forest dynamics. It is driven by climate, disturbances, biotic factors and their interactions. Thus, predictions of tree regeneration are challenging due to complex feedbacks along the wide climatic gradients covered by most tree species. The stress gradient hypothesis (SGH) provi...

In this study, we investigate the cascade of ecological events due to red deer (Cervus elaphus) browsing on bilberry (Vaccinium byrtillus) plants and bilberry-leaf-chewing larvae (Lepidoptera), inside a boreal forest ecosystem located in the southern Alps (Italy)

The benefits of masting (volatile, quasi-synchronous seed production at lagged intervals) include satiation of seed predators, but these benefits come with a cost to mutualist pollen and seed dispersers. If the evolution of masting represents a balance between these benefits and costs, we expect mast avoidance in species that are heavily reliant on...

Wildfire regimes affected by global change have been the cause of major concern in recent years. Both direct prevention (e.g., fuel management planning) and land governance strategies (e.g., agroforestry development) can have an indirect regulatory effect on wildfires. Herein, we tested the hypothesis that active land planning and management in Ita...

We present the first high-resolution Holocene pollen, plant-macrofossil, and charcoal records from the upper-montane zone in the central Dinaric Alps. Drawing on these new records from well-dated lacustrine sediments of Zminje Jezero (ca. 1500 m a.s.l.; Montenegro) and on independent chironomid-inferred summer temperatures, we explore long-term eco...

Aim Our understanding of the mechanisms that maintain forest diversity under changing climate can benefit from knowledge about traits that are closely linked to fitness. We tested whether the link between traits and seed number and seed size is consistent with two hypotheses, termed the leaf economics spectrum and the plant size syndrome, or whethe...

Silvopastoral systems with grazing pigs are mainly concentrated in Mediterranean regions, for instance in Iberian dehesas and montados . Conversely, in European deciduous forests, outdoor pig farming has almost disappeared, despite it could provide several environmental and socioeconomic benefits. For instance, pig grazing could be used for habitat...

Tree regeneration is a key demographic process influencing long-term forest dynamics. It is driven by many biotic and abiotic factors. Thus, predictions of tree regeneration are challenging because of complex feedbacks along climatic gradients. The stress gradient hypothesis (SGH) and life-history strategies (LHS) provide a framework for assessing...

In southern European temperate forests, coppicing is a traditional form of forest management that shaped the present cultural landscape, providing multiple ecosystem services. Roe deer densities have been growing notably during the last decades mainly due to the abandonment of rural areas, changes in human land use and restocking. The impact of roe...

Vecchio D, Musio L, Berretti R, Bono A, Moris JV, Meloni F, Sibona EM, Garbarino M, Motta R, Caffo L, Momo E, Accastello C, Dotta A, Ascoli D. 2022. Pyro-silvicultural treatments to mitigate crown fire behaviour in dry coniferous forest. Fire Ecology Across Boundaries, 4-7 October, Florence (Italy).

Spadoni GL, Moris JV, Vacchiano G, Elia M, Garbarino M, Sibona E, Tomao A, Barbati A, Sallustio L, Salvati L, Ferrara C, Corona P, Marchetti M, Motta R, Ascoli D. 2022. Active land management mitigates wildfires impacts in Italy. Fire Ecology Across Boundaries, 4-7 October, Florence (Italy).

Nell’ambito di due progetti finanziati dal PSR della Regione Piemonte, è stato sviluppato un modello selvicolturale di prevenzione degli incendi di chioma in popolamenti di pino silvestre. In questo contributo si riportano risultati e considerazioni relativi agli interventi in 4 aree pilota realizzati al fine di definire i criteri da applicare nei...

Increasing species diversity is considered a promising strategy to mitigate the negative impacts of global change on forests. However, the interactions between regional climate conditions and species-mixing effects on climate-growth relationships and drought resistance remain poorly documented. In this study, we investigated the patterns of species...

The recognition of the key role of forests in contrasting the dramatic effects of climate change and biodiversity crisis is the pillar of many initiatives on a global , European, and national scale calling for afforestation campaigns. The Ita-lian forest nursery sector is currently inadequate to meet the demand for tree seedlings for the national c...

The increasing disturbances in monocultures around the world are testimony to their instability under global change. Many studies have claimed that temporal stability of productivity increases with species richness, although the ecological fundamentals have mainly been investigated through diversity experiments. To adequately manage forest ecosyste...

The Dinaric Mountains are a region considered as a hotspot for late-successional montane mixed Abies alba-Fagus sylvatica-Picea abies old-growth forests. This is likely due to historical deforestation levels being presumably lower than in other European regions. This paper provides new insights into the long-term vegetation dynamics and possible le...

Context Several plant traits are associated with resistance to fire, thus fire-resistant species may give rise to more fire-resistant landscapes. However, up-scaling from plant traits to landscape- and regional-scale fire effects remains a challenge. Objectives We test two hypotheses: (1) forests composed of fire-resistant species experience low...

Closer-to-Nature Forest Management is a new concept proposed both in the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 and in the EU Biodiversity strategy for 2030. Closer-to-Nature Forest Management aims to improve the conservation values and climate resilience of multifunctional, managed forests in Europe. We present the concept based on a set of seven guiding pri...

European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) can regenerate successfully from seeds after mixed-severity fires with mid-to-long fire return intervals (>60 years). However, if fire return interval is lower than the age of sexual maturity, post-fire seeding will be limited, leaving vegetative resprouting as the only viable option for recovery. This means that...

Heterogeneity of structure can increase mechanical stability, stress resistance and resilience, biodiversity and many other functions and services of forest stands. That is why many silvicultural measures aim at enhancing structural diversity. However, the effectiveness and potential of structuring may depend on the site conditions. Here, we reveal...

La divulgazione scientifica nel settore delle scienze ambientali e forestali ha assunto un ruolo di primo piano. In questo contesto, la comunicazione dei sistemi naturali complessi deve essere fatta con la stessa attitudine all’innovazione che usiamo nella ricerca. La diffusione di prodotti tecnologici e le possibilità offerte dalla “rete” hanno ab...

In Europe, forest management has controlled forest dynamics to sustain commodity production over multiple centuries. Yet over‐regulation for growth and yield diminishes resilience to environmental stress as well as threatens biodiversity, leading to increasing forest susceptibility to an array of disturbances. These trends have stimulated interest...

Ascoli D, Vecchio D, Musio L, Berretti R, Bono A, Moris JV, Meloni F, Sibona E, Garbarino M, Motta R, Caffo L, Momo E, Accastello C, Dotta A. 2022. Pyrosilviculture in mountain pine forests exposed to crown fires. 13th SISEF National Congress, 30 May-2 June, Orvieto (Italy). (In Italian)

With the publication of a Decree that has established a List of the Italian old-growth forests, we have analyzed, using text mining software, the state of the art of Italian research in this field. We have analyzed 188 ISI and 72 non-indexed papers or reports. The analysis has identified 165 locations of which more than 50% are on pure beech or mix...

The relationships that control seed production in trees are fundamental to understanding the evolution of forest species and their capacity to recover from increasing losses to drought, fire, and harvest. A synthesis of fecundity data from 714 species worldwide allowed us to examine hypotheses that are central to quantifying reproduction, a foundat...

Lack of tree fecundity data across climatic gradients precludes the analysis of how seed supply contributes to global variation in forest regeneration and biotic interactions responsible for biodiversity. A global synthesis of raw seedproduction data shows a 250‐fold increase in seed abundance from cold‐dry to warm‐wet climates, driven primarily by...

What is Closer to Nature Forest Management? Closer-to-Nature Forest Management is a new concept proposed in the EU Forest Strategy for 2030, which aims to improve the conservation values and climate resilience of multifunctional, managed forests in Europe. Building on the latest scientific evidence, this report attempts to define the concept based...

The mechanistic pathways connecting ocean-atmosphere variability and terrestrial productivity are well-established theoretically, but remain challenging to quantify empirically. Such quantification will greatly improve the assessment and prediction of changes in terrestrial carbon sequestration in response to dynamically induced climatic extremes....

The growth of past, present, and future forests was, is and will be affected by climate variability. This multifaceted relationship has been assessed in several regional studies, but spatially resolved, large-scale analyses are largely missing so far. Here we estimate recent changes in growth of 5800 beech trees ( Fagus sylvatica L.) from 324 sites...

Since February 2022, the National Forestry Strategy (NFS) for the forest sector and its supply chains is public. The NFS addresses in an innovative and science-based way key issues related to forest fire governance such as the integrated fire risk management, the convergence of forest, agro-pastoral and nature conservation policies with fire govern...

Deriving burn severity from multispectral satellite data is a widely adopted approach to infer the degree of environmental change caused by fire. Burn severity maps obtained by thresholding bi-temporal indices based on pre- and post-fire Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) can vary substantially depending on temporal constraints such as matched acquisition...

In this chapter, we give a short overview of the protective effects of forests against snow avalanches, landslides and rockfall hazards in mountain areas. The overview is based on the protective mechanisms provided by forest and connects them to the effect-related indicators of forest structure from literature and European protective forest managem...

Despite its importance for forest regeneration, food webs, and human economies, changes in tree fecundity with tree size and age remain largely unknown. The allometric increase with tree diameter assumed in ecological models would substantially overestimate seed contributions from large trees if fecundity eventually declines with size. Current esti...

Under climate change, modifications on plants’ growth are expected to be the strongest at species margins. Therein, tree acclimation could play a key role as migration is predicted to be too slow to track shifts of bioclimatic envelops. A requirement is, however, that intra-population genetic diversity be high enough for allowing such adaptation of...

The PhD candidate will investigate both the influence of climate variability on forest ecosystem functioning (e.g. tree reproduction, mortality) and adaptation to climate change by sustainable forest management practices (e.g. silvicultural systems that prevent or mitigate drought, fire and storm impacts). The research will deepen how climate, dist...

Forest harvesting in Europe: a healthy scientific debate Is forest harvesting increasing in Europe? There is scientific debate about methodological approach and data regarding clearcut increment in Europe but, besides the discussion, there is a general agreement about the need to collect reliable scientifically robust remote sensing data for sound...

Partendo dall’esperienza nordamericana, si propongono modelli selvicolturali per aumentare l’eterogeneità strutturale di boschi di conifere per la prevenzione degli incendi boschivi, quali interessanti spunti di riflessione anche per le realtà mediterranee e alpine.

Old-growth forests have an important role in maintaining animal and plant diversity, are important carbon (C) reservoirs and are privileged sites to study long-term plant physiological responses, long-term forest dynamics and climate change impact on forest ecosystems. Several studies have highlighted how old-living trees undergo age-related declin...

Vaia storm facing the unbearable lightness of forest reporting Recently published data on Italian forest removals from FAO and EUROSTAT are still ridden with inaccuracies and underestimation. In this work we show how and why the Italian forestry data collection system is in itself unreliable. This represents a major obstacle for designing sector po...

ContextLand use legacies of human activities and recent post-abandonment forest expansion have extensively modified numerous forest landscapes throughout the European mountain ranges. Drivers of forest expansion and the effects of changes on ecosystem services are currently debated.Objectives(i) To compare landscape transition patterns of the Alps...

Context: Since the nineteenth century, rural areas have experienced progressive abandonment mostly due to socioeconomic changes, with direct and indirect effects on forest disturbance regimes occurring in these human-dominated landscapes. The role of land abandonment in modifying disturbance regimes has been highlighted for some types of disturbanc...

According to the European Landscape Convention (ELC), a landscape means "an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors". Therefore, both human actions and natural processes play a role in shaping the landscape, which is, by this definition, ever changing. "Protecting" th...

Deadwood plays a key role in the functioning and productivity of forest ecosystem and it is an important feature for the conservation of the biodiversity. In the past land-use and forest management have dramatically reduced the amount of deadwood in the European forests and only in the last decades the important role of the deadwood has been studie...

Primary forests are critical for forest biodiversity and provide key ecosystem services. In Europe, these forests are particularly scarce and it is unclear whether they are sufficiently protected. Here we aim to: (a) understand whether extant primary forests are representative of the range of naturally occurring forest types, (b) identify forest ty...

This study evaluated the effectiveness of Sentinel-2 (S2) as a tool for early detection and estimation of forest harvesting in the Piemonte Region, which can be used by the regional forest administration. The priority was the detection, at the regional scale, of annual forest cover changes with the following goals: i) mapping of irregular (in respe...

In a context of progressive expansion of the Italian forest area, we present the results of a national survey exploring public perception of forests across different geographical scales in Italy. Perceptions of forests are assessed in relation to popular beliefs on relevant environmental issues such as countering climate change, protecting biodiver...

Biogradska Gora National Park in Montenegro is part of the Dinaric Mountains mixed forest, which belongs to the montane region of the Dinaric Alps. This paper presents some of the main structural and ecological characteristics of the mixed broadleaved old-growth forest with beech [Fagus moesiaca (Domin, Maly) Czecz.], sycamore maple (Acer pseudopla...

Forest ecosystems are threatened by different natural disturbances. Among them, the irruption of large herbivores represents one of the most alarming issues. Several local-scale studies have been carried out to clarify the mechanisms governing ungulate–forest interactions, to understand the effect of wild ungulates overabundance, and to apply conse...

Mid‐ and long‐term monitoring of restoration projects have to be performed, as short‐term evaluations do not give comprehensive information about their outcomes. In this study, we assessed the results of a forest restoration project, implemented in former road builder’s yards. We evaluated the recovery of the soil’s physical and chemical properties...