Legacy of wood charcoal production on subalpine forest structure and species composition

Land-use legacy on forest dynamics at both stand and landscape scale can last for centuries, affecting forest structure and species composition. We aimed to disentangle the history of the charcoal production legacies that historically shaped Mont Avic Natural Park (Aosta Valley, Italy) forests by integrating LiDAR, GIS, anthracological, and field data at the landscape scale. We adopted different geostatistical tools to relate geographic layers from various data sources. The overexploitation due to intensive charcoal production to fuel mining activities shaped the current forests by homogenising their structure and species composition into dense and young stands with a reduction in late seral species such as Norway spruce (Picea abies) and an increase in pioneer species such as Mountain pine (Pinus uncinata). The multidisciplinary and multi-scale framework adopted in this study stresses the role of historical landscape ecology in evaluating ecosystem resilience to past anthropogenic disturbances.