Systemic silviculture and Mediterranean forest complexity: the need for a new paradigm in forestry

The Mediterranean basin encompasses a wide variety of landscapes and environments, hosts a huge diversity of faunal and flora species. Such a diversity, particularly in the woody systems, is endangered by the pressure of human activities. Moreover, the management of Mediterranean forests is still based on a classical, now unsuitable approach, largely targeted to further the productive goals. Following the social expectation and awareness of a new approach need, it is compulsive to adopt a different way to manage and cultivate such forest systems. The Systemic Silviculture, a new paradigm in forestry, matches the requested respect of system complexity, absence of schematic rules, continuous monitoring of the forest feedback to human actions.