Italian coppices and their economic income

Coppice is one of the most important management system of Italian forests. An overall view of Italian coppices situation taken from National Forest Inventory is given in the present work. Moreover forest enterprises characteristics were analyzed and the overlay between these investigated parameters allowed to an evaluation of the improvement possibilities of coppice management in Italian context. The main results of this analysis showed that the main problems of Italian forest sector, with particular reference to coppice are: Predominance of private properties, lacking of forest utilizations planning, lacking of technological innovation mostly linked to bunching-extraction operation, low economic value of fuel wood and lacking of products diversification.