Le foreste vetuste nei Parchi Nazionali d’Italia

Old-growth forests in the Italian National Parks. Italian old-growth forests have never been studied through a national project. In Italy thousands of years of forests exploita- tion suggested the complete absence of forests with old-growth characteristics. In the last decades, the abandonment of the for- ested areas more difficult to harvest allows the presence of for- est with old-growth features. This study, aims to find forests with these features within Italian National Parks, to classify them through a phytosociological analysis and to define their structure. Through interviews with local Forest Service and Parks em- ployees, the fieldwork of botanist and forest scientist list of 68 forests has been defined. These areas have been characterized from a vegetational and a structural (living and dead wood) point of view.