To support sustainable forest management, planning policies and environmental actions, it is essential to have available common and standardized geospatial information on forest structure, composition and distribution. In this paper we present a harmonized forest categories (HFCs) map of four administrative Regions located in central Italy (i.e. Marche, Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise) at a scale of 1:400,000. The study area extends over 42,246 km², 14,878 km² of which are covered by forests. Four regional forest maps were harmonized in order to produce common standardized information on composition, structure and the distribution of forests in central Italy. A forest category is a forest vegetation unit defined by the main tree species composition. In this study we adopted a nomenclature scheme composed of 16 forest and shrubland categories. This work represents the first HFCs map in Italy over a large area. The legend is also harmonized with the European Environment Agency forest types nomenclature. © 2016 Nicolò Camarretta.

The availability of common standardized geospatial information on composition, structure and distribution of forests is essential to support environmental actions, sustainable forest management and planning policies. Forest types maps are suitable tools for supporting both silvicultural and forest planning choices from local to global scale levels. For this reason local authorities may develop forest types maps independently, in which case a standardized/harmonized framework for their comparison and aggregation is essential. At the same time local forest types maps may not be directly related to pan-European forest resources assessments and classification systems. This paper presents results of the harmonization of four forest types maps available for central Italy. The process is based on a bottom-up approach aimed at maintaining the most detailed common nomenclature system across the different Regions. The final results, in terms of forest types area, are compared with several independent sources of information: (i) two forest maps, one developed at national level on the basis of the Corine Land Cover 2006, and one for high resolution forest/non forest classification developed at pan-European level; and (ii) two sample based inventories: the Italian National Forest Inventory (INFC) and the Italian Land Use Inventory (IUTI). The results show that the proposed bottomup harmonization approach is a suitable tool to guarantee the integrity and homogeneity of local forest types nomenclature systems, and to integrate such local data with European standards. ©iForest – Biogeosciences and Forestry