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Managing coppice forests for rockfall protection: lessons from modeling

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Annals of Forest Science Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

• Context

One eighth of Europe’s forests are still managed as coppice. In some European countries, more than half of the forest exhibits coppice structures from the past or present coppice management. Many of these forests grow in the broadleaf zone of mountainous regions, often on steep slopes. Here, they play an important role in rockfall protection. However, it remains unclear how coppice forests should be structured for optimal rockfall protection or how the protection effect changes during the aging of the coppice.

• Aim

A few studies have applied rock trajectory analyses, but so far, no process-based model has been used to quantify the protective effect of differently structured coppice forests. The present study compared 40 coppice patches from two chronosequences in South Tyrol, North Italy, regarding their protective effect against rocks of two sizes using the rockfall simulation model Rockyfor3D.

• Results

The results indicate that coppice stands older than 30 years better protect against rockfall than medium-aged and young stands, although the old ones have lower stem densities. Surprisingly, a random stem distribution had a better protective effect than the clumped stem distribution typical for coppice stands.

• Conclusion

Implications for future management are discussed in detail, including the relevance of standards in coppice forests.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Theresa Wagner and Joseph Molyneux for their help in the field, to Giustino Tonon and Verena Larcher for their support with the sampling design, and most importantly, to Oliver Jancke for numerous enlightening discussions about rockfall in coppice forests. Thomas Cordonnier gave valuable advice for the spatial analyses of the tree distributions. The study was supported by the forest service of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano. Joseph Bartho corrected the English. We thank Barry Gardiner and one anonymous reviewer for their very valuable comments to improve the manuscript.

Funding

The EcoRAlps project was funded by the Stemmler and Immerschitt foundations within the “Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft” (Association of Foundations for German Science) and the Foundation of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, 39100, Bolzano, Italy

    Anna Radtke & Stefan Zerbe

  2. Irstea, UR EMGR, 2 rue de la Papeterie, 38402, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France

    David Toe, Frederic Berger & Franck Bourrier

Authors
  1. Anna Radtke
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  2. David Toe
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  3. Frederic Berger
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  4. Stefan Zerbe
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  5. Franck Bourrier
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anna Radtke.

Additional information

Handling Editor: Barry Alan Gardiner

Contributions of the co-authors

Toe: running the data analysis.

Bourrier: writing the paper, supervising the work, help in running the data analysis

Zerbe: coordinating the research project (named EcoRAlps)

Berger: supervising the work

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Radtke, A., Toe, D., Berger, F. et al. Managing coppice forests for rockfall protection: lessons from modeling. Annals of Forest Science 71, 485–494 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-013-0339-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-013-0339-z

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