Venacquaro Valley, Gran Sasso National Park. Ph. D. Di Santo
Here’s another piece of news relative the LIFE+ project – FAGUS, a project I collaborated with from 2013-2015. The Italian Ministry of the Environment elected FAGUS as Project of the Month – Jan 2017, and published a long press release summarizing objectives, actions and achievements of FAGUS.
The press release can be found at the url (only in Italian, unfortunately):
http://www.minambiente.it/pagina/progetti-del-mese
Congratulations to all the staff of FAGUS!
For those who want to know more about FAGUS, it was the subject of a couple of previous posts:
The mess of sampling forest biodiversity
and of an open-access scientific publication:
FAGUS is a LIFE+ project which focuses on two habitats of European priority interest according to the EU Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) i.e., the habitat 9210* – Apennine beech forests with Taxus and Ilex, and the habitat 9220* – Apennine beech forests with Abies alba and beech forests with Abies nebrodensis. During the project, specifically designed silvicultural intervention were applied to six beech forest stands in two Italian national parks in the Apennines. The aim was to reconcile biodiversity conservation and economic interests of local stakeholders. The concrete actions were designed to enhance the structural heterogeneity of these forest stands, with the expectation that this will foster the biological diversity for several taxa, i.e. vascular plants, lichens, birds, saproxylic beetles and fungi.
To know more, check the project website:
FORESTS & CO 