In France, the experimental actions are carried out at 30 forest plots in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur region (PACA) in South of France, including 3 RENECOFOR plots and 2 plots for the ozone fluxes measurements (Fontblanche and Puéchabon).

The experimental actions are carried out at 49 forest plots across Italy including 24 plots in Piedmont region, 23 CONECOFOR plots and 2 plots (San Rossore and Castelporziano) for the ozone fluxes measurements.

RENECOFOR network http://www.onf.fr/renecofor

The French National Network for Long Term Intensive Monitoring of Forest Ecosystems (RENECOFOR) was created in 1992 by the National Forests Office (ONF) to complete the sanitary monitoring system of French forests. The main objective of this network is to detect and estimate possible long-term changes in the functioning of forest ecosystems and to underline reasons of these trends. ONF supports this project by offering access to French RENECOFOR network sites by providing all necessary information and by granting us time to help in the project realization.

This network constitutes the French part of a set of follow-up plots of forest ecosystems implemented in 34 European countries and include 102 forest experimental plots across France. This network is a part of 3 monitoring networks of French forests health, with the correspondent observer network and the European network.


CONECOFOR network http://www3.corpoforestale.it/...

Corpo Forestale dello Stato (CFS; Italian for State Forestry Department) is a national police agency in Italy and supports this project by offering access to Italian CONECOFOR (CONtrolli ECOsistemi FORestali) network sites by providing all necessary information.

CONECOFOR is the Italian program for the intensive monitoring of forest ecosystems sponsored by the Ministry for Agricultural and Forest Policy and the European Commission. It is based upon a series of investigations carried out on 27 plots, from 1999, located throughout Italy. The investigations collect data on various ecosystem compartments and processes. In Italy, the Integrated and Combined (I&C;) evaluation system within the CONECOFOR program involves three major approaches: (i) The evaluation of risk status in relation to air pollution, (ii) The quantification of the ecosystem's status and changes, and (iii) The evaluation of the relationship between pressure and status indicators through time. The “I&C;” project involves scientists from many institutions; major emphasis is placed on the evaluation of data quality and precision. These are regarded as the basic steps in the whole project and a likely source of information about the suitability of the current sample sizes for providing a proper estimation of the parameters under consideration.

For these plots, the interesting available data and observations are: foliar (every 2 years) and soil (every 10 years) chemistry, ambient air quality and meteorology (continuously), tree growth (every 5 years), crown condition (annually) and atmospheric deposition chemistry (continuously). These networks follow the forest ecosystems evolution, in particular climate change, and contribute to the determination and understanding of cause-and-effect relationship between external factors and observed evolutions to help, in fine, forest administrators concerning choices to insure a long-term management of forests.