Silvicultural Systems

The aims of the course are:
- to understand the effect of biotic and abiotic factors on single trees, stands and forest communities;
- to recognise the forest types of Lombardy and their environmental preferences;
- to quantitatively describe the characteristics of a forest stand by field survey and numerical processing of data, and forecasting its evolution over time;
- to understand the relationships between forests, climate change and biodiversity;
- to quantify ecosystem services and wood production that can be expressed by forest catchments, the vulnerability of forests to hydro-geological hazards, climate change and wildfire;
- to choose forest management strategies adequate to provide the chosen ecosystem services and guarantee their environmental, economic and social sustainability;
- to interpret and analyse forest planning documents (II and III level plans);
- to design and write a harvest plan, calculate mass, increment and harvest rate for forest stands;
- to describe with cartographic methods the physical and ecological characteristics of forest stands;
- to understand and apply national and regional forest regulations.

The skills acquired at the end of the course are:
- apply the principles of sustainable forest management and planning for the supply of production and regulation ecosystem services, their relationship with the conservation of habitats and species and as a tool for mitigating and adapting to climate change;
- apply the basic tools to interpret and design local and regional forest management plans, harvesting plans forest improvement plans for mountain and lowland forests.