Prime valutazioni sull'introduzione della rinnovazione naturale nel bosco ceduo di castagno misto a faggio nella foresta sperimentale e didattica della SPF di Zurigo a Novaggio, Cantone Ticino | Preliminary evaluation of the introduction of natural regeneration into a chestnut-beech coppice in Novaggio, Tessin, Switzerland

To date there has been very little information on the dry deciduous forests on the southern side of the alps. To redress this imbalance we carried out an intensive and detailed survey of the natural regeneration processes in chestnut-beech-coppice stands in a deciduous forest over a period of 6 years. On a steep sunless slope with easterly exposure we clear cut four narrow aisles, each about 15 metres wide and 100 metres long. On numerous transsections within these aisles, all the way up to the borders where trees were left standing, we installed 119 test sample areas of 1m2, systematically and objectively distributed. The regular examination and taking stock of initial rich natural seeding shows very clearly that this abundance was made possible, above all, by the roughening up of the top soil during clearing. In the following years nearly all test sample areas were covered with increasingly thick layers of leaf-mould which appears to have made subsequent seeding amazingly difficult. In fact, numerous sp...