Across the Apennine watershed — from Piacenza in the north to the Calabrian ranges in the south — coppice woodland remains the most common forest type on privately held land. Estimates from the 2015 National Forest Inventory (INFC) placed active coppice at roughly 3.8 million hectares, or around 38% of Italy’s total forested area. The figure has declined steadily since the mid-twentieth century, but in the central Apennines the system persists with genuine continuity, not merely as a heritage curiosity.
The structure of a working coppice
A coppice stand is managed on a rotation — typically 12 to 25 years for mixed broadleaf woodland at Apennine altitudes — during which the stools (the root systems left in the ground after each cut) regenerate multiple stems. At the end of the rotation, all stems above a certain diameter are harvested for firewood, charcoal, or small roundwood. A proportion of standards — larger, older trees grown from seed rather than resprouted from stools — are retained through several rotations to provide structural timber and seed sources.
In the central Apennines, the dominant coppice species are Quercus cerris (Turkey oak), Quercus pubescens (downy oak), Carpinus betulus (hornbeam), Acer campestre (field maple), and Ostrya carpinifolia (hop hornbeam). The exact composition shifts with altitude and aspect: Quercus cerris dominates south-facing slopes below 700 m; Carpinus betulus and Acer campestre become more prominent on north-facing slopes and in valley bottoms where moisture is retained.
Historical context
The legal framework for coppice management in Italy stretches back at least to the Venetian Provveditori sopra i Boschi of the sixteenth century, whose regulations were concerned primarily with timber supply for the Arsenal rather than with ecological outcomes. In Tuscany, Lombardy, and the Papal States, forest statutes from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries already codified rotation lengths and cutting prohibitions — evidence that the system was well established long before formal state forestry.
The shift away from coppice accelerated after World War II, driven by the collapse in charcoal demand, rural depopulation, and the conversion of many Apennine holdings into high forest for timber production. The areas that retained active coppice management were those where the economics of firewood remained viable and where land ownership remained fragmented among small private holders — conditions that still describe much of the central Apennines today.
Current management practice
Most active coppice in the Apennines is managed by small private owners, often as part-time holdings of 5–30 hectares. Regional forest laws (leggi regionali forestali) govern rotation lengths, minimum stump heights, the proportion of standards to be retained, and seasonal cutting windows. In Tuscany, the relevant legislation is the Legge Regionale 39/2000; in Emilia-Romagna, the Legge Regionale 30/1981 and its subsequent modifications apply.
Rotation lengths in current Tuscan practice range from 12 to 18 years for Quercus cerris-dominated stands and from 18 to 25 years for stands with significant Carpinus betulus content. The longer rotation is associated with higher-altitude sites where growth rates are slower and where larger-diameter roundwood commands a premium for specialty uses (tool handles, turned ware).
The main off-take market is firewood for domestic heating. A secondary market exists for charcoal — Italy retains a small but active artisanal charcoal production sector, concentrated in Lazio and Campania — and for small-diameter roundwood used in vineyard and orchard support structures. The combined value of these markets is sufficient to justify management costs on well-stocked stands, but marginal on degraded or fragmented holdings.
Ecological considerations
The ecological status of coppice woodland is contested in contemporary Italian forestry discourse. Critics point to the structural simplification of stands under regular cutting cycles and the loss of old-growth features (large-diameter standing deadwood, hollow trees, veteran standards). Advocates note the high structural diversity created at the landscape scale by the patchwork of stands at different stages in the rotation, and the documented richness of invertebrate and early-successional plant communities in recently cut stools.
Long-term permanent plots in the Casentino (Tuscany) and in the Apennines of Emilia-Romagna have recorded floristic diversity comparable to, or in some measures exceeding, that of adjacent high-forest stands of similar age. The comparison is complicated by the fact that most “comparable” high-forest stands in the region are even-aged plantations with their own structural limitations, not old-growth reference points.
The question of abandonment
Across much of the Apennines, the practical question is not how to manage coppice but how to address stands that have been left uncut beyond their intended rotation. When a coppice stand is not harvested at the scheduled rotation, stems continue to grow but the stool’s vigour declines. After two or three missed rotations (typically 40–60 years beyond the last cut) many stools lose the capacity to resprout and the stand transitions to an irregular multi-stemmed woodland that fits neither the coppice nor the high-forest management category.
Italian forest policy has oscillated on how to treat these “abandoned coppice” stands. A 2018 amendment to the national framework decree (D.Lgs. 34/2018) relaxed the conditions under which owners could convert abandoned coppice to high forest, accepting that in many cases conversion to a more open-grown stand structure was the ecologically preferable outcome given the reduced stool vigour.
Sources and further reading
- INFC (2015). Inventario Nazionale delle Foreste e dei Serbatoi Forestali di Carbonio. Ministero delle Politiche Agricole Alimentari e Forestali. inventarioforestale.org
- Ciancio, O. & Nocentini, S. (2011). Il bosco ceduo: selvicoltura, assestamento, gestione. Accademia Italiana di Scienze Forestali.
- Sabatini, F.M. et al. (2015). “Drivers of tree diversity in coppice woodlands across Northern Apennines.” Forest Ecology and Management 347: 45–55. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2015.03.024
- Regione Toscana (2000). Legge Regionale 39/2000 — Legge Forestale della Toscana. regione.toscana.it