Remote sensing data and field survey activities for monitoring the evolution of forest systems after coppicing and soil erosion: A case study in Sardinia (Italy)

The practice of coppicing is debated in the literature for the risk factors associated with soil erosion. Although erosion experiments provide useful data for estimating the susceptibility to soil erosion, there are many open questions that cannot be solved in isolated experiments, but which can be assessed by activating a long-term monitoring process. In this way, it is possible to correctly frame the spatial and temporal scale of soil erosion in coppice forests. The aim of the work is to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of remote sensing data in combination with field data, for monitoring the evolution of forest stands interested by coppicing in relation to soil erosion. We have installed a long-term monitoring network for erosion estimation, while Sentinel-2C satellite data were used for the period 2016-2018. Starting from this dataset, a selection of vegetation indices was calculated and compared to the morphological and topographical parameters of the study area, as well as the above-ground data collected during field activities. Using the Canonical Correspondences Analysis (CCA) the relationships between the matrix of vegetation indices, topographic and vegetational parameters and the respective performances of this protocol have been explored in order to describe the evolution of the forest stands in the study area associated to soil losses.