In South Tyrol, the calibration and application of forest simulation models as the first phase, in a jargon very reminiscent of computer science, is called initialization. This initialization will be carried out on a subregional scale in two areas within the Vinschgau Valley: the Mazia Valley - which has already been home to a Eurac Research open-air laboratory of for long-term ecological research (LTSER) for years - and a forest area near Prato allo Stelvio that also includes a portion of the National Park. "These places were chosen because they host different forest types, at different elevations," comments Marco Mina, "the variety of constitution of these forests could allow us to extrapolate useful results for similar forest types found in other areas of South Tyrol. And we have not excluded the possibility of including other areas in the modeling, especially more southern valleys such as Val d'Ega or in Trentino in the future.
At the moment Marco Mina - together with other colleagues from the Eurac Research Institute of Alpine Environment - is working on the most challenging and substantial phase of the project: data collection and initialization of the forest landscape. In order to initialize and calibrate a simulation model at such a large scale, a huge amount of current and historical data is required. The data provided by the Forest Planning Office of the Province of Bolzano is already a source of valuable information on the structure of the forest - volumes, current stages of development, characteristics of the soil where the trees grow, percentage of tree species present - and on the management and logging interventions, in essence they tell how the forest has evolved in recent decades. This information can be integrated with the even more detailed data, collected in the forest by Eurac Research researchers, who can also describe the growth of a single tree in relation to the climate.