Silvicultural and logging impact on soil characteristics in Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) Mediterranean coppice

Abstract

Commonly, in Italy coppice utilization consists in a felling of about 80-85% of the above-ground woody biomass, with release of scattered standards (about 40-120 standard/ha). This is a crucial operation in forest management, which also has important effects on understory, fauna, and soil. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact generated by the prescribed silvicultural treatment and by the logging methodology on the soil characteristics, within the chestnut coppice with standards located in central Italy on the Cimini Mountain area. This study has paid close attention to the application of the coppice with standards management to the soil ecosystem of chestnut woods, with special regards to its utilizations and problems. The applicative use of equipment and working methods were also included in this study to evaluate the entity of impact on forest soil characteristics. For the study of the silvicultural treatment and logging impacts on the forest soils in addition to the usual physical and chemical analysis (pH, organic matter, bulk density, penetrometric and shear resistance), soil quality was estimated by means of a biological index based on soil microarthropod (QBS-ar). Our findings demonstrate that physical, chemical and biological soil features can be strongly impacted by harvesting operations and, consequently, certain soil processes may be influenced at the imposed compaction levels. On other hand, in the areas where soils were not impacted by harvesting, physical, chemical and biological soil features showed values similar to the mature stages of coppice stands. The results confirm that chestnut coppice soils are characterized by high biodiversity level of edaphic fauna and from a well-structured and mature microarthropod community, which is typical of stable ecosystems (QBS-ar value >200).