UNITUS

The Department for Innovation in Biological, Agro-Food and Forest Systems (DIBAF) of the University of Tuscia carries out multidisciplinary research and development activities in several fields of forest and agro- environmental management. Forestry research is mainly focused in the areas of forest inventories and geomatics in support to sustainable forest management, multicriteria forest planning methods, spatial assessment of forest ecosystem services.

DIBAF has been actively involved in key EU projects dealing with the collection and reporting of harmonized information on sustainable forest management indicators in Europe, like the COST Action “E43- Harmonisation of National Inventories in Europe: Techniques for Common Reporting”. DIBAF staff, notably, has actively contributed to development and implementation of the EEA European Forest Type (EFT) classification in Europe and has been in charge of activities of pilot reporting by EFTs within the Forest Europe process.

DIBAF is also currently partner of national level projects relevant to the proposal: the LIFE Nature Project “FAGUS: Forest of the Appennines good practices to coniugate use and sustainability”, dealing with the protection of forest ecosystems by SFM practices, and “MIMOSE – Development of innovative models for multiscale monitoring of ecosystem services indicators in Mediterranean forests” (Fund for investment in basic research, Ministry of Education, Universities and Research), addressing the spatial estimation of SFM indicators at multiple spatial scales.

More in general, DIBAF has gained expertise in monitoring approaches combining remote sensing and other data sources (forest inventory, fluxdata) to assess Forest Europe indicators (FP7-SPACE-2007 Geoland 2), with focus on the contribution of forests to global carbon cycles (FP7-ENV-2011 Geocarbon, FP7-ENV-2009 GHGEurope, FP7-ENV-2007 COCOS).

DIBAF staff is also expert of the UNECE/FAO Team of Specialists on Monitoring SFM in Europe.

http://www.dibaf.unitus.it