Forest regenaration interventions of habitat 91E0 * in agricultural areas in river basin

LIFE: ST.A.R.

ST.A.R. - Conservation and expansion of the wet forests belonging to habitat 91E0 (alluvial forests of Alnus glutinosa and Fraxinus excelsior)


LIFE07 NAT/IT/000498

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Object

Forest renaturalization interventions of habitat 91E0 * (Alluvial forests with Alnus glutinosa and Fraxinus excelsior) on intensively used agricultural areas.

Objective

Improvement of the conservation conditions of habitat 91E0* through the expansion and interconnection of the areas where this habitat is detected and the optimization of the permanence of water within the areas.

Good Practice Description

The good practice entails the application and adaptation of already known renaturalization methodologies relating to:

• morphological and hydraulic restoration by remodeling the land to provide the planted plants with adequate water availability deriving from groundwater resurgence of the aquifer or from stagnation of rainwater and flooding, removing, for example, artificial drainage of water,

• production of nursery material through seeds from local standard trees,

• renaturalization interventions (plantations, sowing, translocation of soil and plant species from already wooded areas, ...) with exclusively local vegetative material.

Territorial Context

The area falls entirely within the Municipality of Rivignano (UD) and specifically in the Risorgive dello Stella SCI, it is characterised by flat land that tends to be fine-grained and by groundwater resurgence phenomena. The natural or semi-natural vegetation is concentrated along an articulated network of waterways that originate from an area located a few kilometres upstream, called the resurgence line.

Replicability conditions

The habitat 91E0* (Alluvial forests with Alnus glutinosa and Fraxinus excelsior) in Europe is practically close to extinction, as almost all rivers have been dammed for agricultural or urbanization reasons. The good practice, therefore, can be usefully replicated in other contexts by creating new humid environments and implementing the woods by transplanting the native plants present in the area.

Dissemination material

From the LIFE GoProFor database, in the final part of the sheet, it is possible to download some material relating to the project, including a technical report on the results of the project and the final manual describing all the good practices implemented.