Assessment of forest GPP variations in central Italy

A debate is in progress concerning the possible effects of climate changes on the primary production of both natural and artificial ecosystems. The current investigation builds on the hypothesis that trends of increasing air temperature observed in several Italian regions should positively affect productivity of mountain forest ecosystems. Temperature rise in the Mugello valley (central Italy) in the period 1986–2001 was first confirmed by the analysis of data from a local station. The effects of this rise on the productivity of deciduous forest ecosystems (dominated by beech, Fagus sylvatica L.) were then analysed through estimates of the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) derived from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer satellite normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data. The use of a simplified parametric model (C-Fix) then allowed the combination of these FAPAR estimates with meteorological data (tempera...

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