Ricerc@Sapienza

Among the wide pool of ecosystem services provided by forests to human wellbeing, biodiversity conservation represents one of the
most important topics of Sustainable Forest Management. Monitoring forest biodiversity is a challenging task as it includes all the
life forms that can be found in a forest. However, the availability of inventory data is often inadequate to assess the biodiversity value
of forests, therefore requiring improvements in monitoring activities and methods. In the last decades, several improvements have

In the last few years, the occurrence and abundance of tree-related microhabitats and habitat
trees have gained great attention across Europe as indicators of forest biodiversity. Nevertheless,
observing microhabitats in the field requires time and well-trained sta. For this reason, new ecient
semiautomatic systems for their identification and mapping on a large scale are necessary. This study
aims at predicting microhabitats in a mixed and multi-layered Mediterranean forest using Airborne

Aim: Primary forests have high conservation value but are rare in Europe due to historic land use. Yet many primary forest patches remain unmapped, and it is unclear to what extent they are effectively protected. Our aim was to (1) compile the most comprehensive European-scale map of currently known primary forests, (2) analyse the spatial determinants characterizing their location and (3) locate areas where so far unmapped primary forests likely occur.
Location: Europe.