The presence of trees in the countryside is a process that begins in Etruscan times  and increases in the late Middle Ages. It accelerates with the great changes of the XVI–XVII century, which see the decline of Italy as an important commercial power due to the changed conditions of competitiveness of the economic system and its progressive transformation into an agricultural country, with a land investment in progressive growth. The processes of expansion of crops in the plain and in the hills, although crossed by various phases of crisis, would tempt to describe these landscapes as without forests, but it is certainly not so. The density of trees in some areas reaches values that do not suggest tree plantations, but rather real forests. In some areas there can be 50–70 plants per hectare, in others the double rows made the number rise even to 200 plants per hectare. From the 1920s onwards there is a progressive decline which goes hand in hand with the mechanisation and specialisation of agricultural crops that evolve towards monoculture for industrial purposes. Until about 1980, more than the half of the fuel wood in Italy was not produced from forests, but from trees in the field. This suggests that a different kind of forest, not the dense, homogeneous, forest cover we usually think of, but rather an agroforestry system, can play both an economic and environmental role. The work of reforestation and hydraulic arrangement of mountain basins represents the most important and problematic commitment undertaken by the Italian administration from the Unification of Italy to the period between the two wars, with the aim of increasing the country’s timber resources, but also of reducing the hydrogeological instability of the mountains. Attention to this problem continues today. It is also interesting to reflect on this history considering the current scientific suggestions and political initiatives promoting extended afforestation for climate purposes. Sometime these plans lack of a careful considerations of the lessons learnt from the past, that, if not taken into careful consideration, may lead to the failure of these projects. The arrangement works of the Italian mountain river basins goes through different phases. In the first period the hydraulic arrangement of the riverbeds, basically the building of dikes, compared to afforestation was preferred. Later, we notice a more balanced approach assigning importance to both methods. In any case, most of the afforestation carried out by the state until the years after second world war was unsuccessful, with a large preference assigned to conifers creating low quality landscapes, almost no management occurred after planting and a very small number of new forests created. The doubling of the forest area due to agricultural abandonment does not seem to have solved the problems connected to reducing the hydrogeological instability of the mountains.

Lowland Forests and Mountain Reforestations

章节
发表日期：

2025年

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Mauro Agnoletti

摘要

The presence of trees in the countryside is a process that begins in Etruscan times and increases in the late Middle Ages. It accelerates with the great changes of the XVI–XVII century, which see the decline of Italy as an important commercial power due to the changed conditions of competitiveness of the economic system and its progressive transformation into an agricultural country, with a land investment in progressive growth. The processes of expansion of crops in the plain and in the hills, although crossed by various phases of crisis, would tempt to describe these landscapes as without forests, but it is certainly not so. The density of trees in some areas reaches values that do not suggest tree plantations, but rather real forests. In some areas there can be 50–70 plants per hectare, in others the double rows made the number rise even to 200 plants per hectare. From the 1920s onwards there is a progressive decline which goes hand in hand with the mechanisation and specialisation of agricultural crops that evolve towards monoculture for industrial purposes. Until about 1980, more than the half of the fuel wood in Italy was not produced from forests, but from trees in the field. This suggests that a different kind of forest, not the dense, homogeneous, forest cover we usually think of, but rather an agroforestry system, can play both an economic and environmental role. The work of reforestation and hydraulic arrangement of mountain basins represents the most important and problematic commitment undertaken by the Italian administration from the Unification of Italy to the period between the two wars, with the aim of increasing the country’s timber resources, but also of reducing the hydrogeological instability of the mountains. Attention to this problem continues today. It is also interesting to reflect on this history considering the current scientific suggestions and political initiatives promoting extended afforestation for climate purposes. Sometime these plans lack of a careful considerations of the lessons learnt from the past, that, if not taken into careful consideration, may lead to the failure of these projects. The arrangement works of the Italian mountain river basins goes through different phases. In the first period the hydraulic arrangement of the riverbeds, basically the building of dikes, compared to afforestation was preferred. Later, we notice a more balanced approach assigning importance to both methods. In any case, most of the afforestation carried out by the state until the years after second world war was unsuccessful, with a large preference assigned to conifers creating low quality landscapes, almost no management occurred after planting and a very small number of new forests created. The doubling of the forest area due to agricultural abandonment does not seem to have solved the problems connected to reducing the hydrogeological instability of the mountains.