Occhito Lake area (Fortore River basin), Puglia Region, Southern Italy
Project ended
Landscape level
Forests around Occhito Lake are increasingly exposed to wildfire due to climate change and rural land abandonment. The PABLO project aims to bring public-private business partners together in a community of practice to develop a management approach that balances environmental, social and economic aspects. It developed a 10-year forest management plan and set up a voluntary public-private “Forest Agreement” for to mobilise joint action and mixed funding. A pilot prescribed burn was tested to reduce fuel loads and improve fire prevention, while the partnership approach aims to strengthen ecosystem resilience and local rural economies.
Occhito Lake is a large artificial reservoir on the Fortore River, marking the border between Molise and Puglia for about 12 km, with a capacity of about 250 million m³ and protected Natura 2000 sites. The surrounding forests include extensive conifer reforestation from the 1970s, originally intended to improve hydrogeological protection. The area faces agricultural land abandonment and fragmented, ad hoc forest interventions, alongside rising wildfire damage that is intensified by hotter, drier summers. Poor forest condition (including disruptions and landslides) undermines slope stabilisation and the ecological state of the lake, while increasing settlement at the forest–urban interface raises risks and civil protection costs.
The project created a structured package of nature-based forest governance and management tools to reduce wildfire risk and strengthen forest resilience around Occhito Lake. It produced a 10-year management plan informed by field surveys and LiDAR drone data, and proposed a voluntary public-private “Forest Agreement” to coordinate implementation and monitoring across multiple landowners and institutions. A prescribed burning pilot on 4.84 ha tested controlled use of fire to reduce fuels and slow canopy fire spread, while partners worked to elevate the need for practical regional guidelines to enable broader application.
The first intervention was the preparation of a forestry management plan for the forest landscape around Occhito Lake, intended to guide objectives, strategies, and both silvicultural and non-silvicultural measures over a 10-year period. The plan aimed to strengthen forest fire prevention and reduce hydrogeological instability that is worsening under climate change. A detailed inventory underpinned the plan, integrating traditional field monitoring with remote sensing, particularly airborne LiDAR. Field data were collected using a one-per-stratum stratified sampling approach within 85 homogeneous areas (based on morphology and forest type), each subdivided into 23 m x 23 m square cells; one random cell per homogeneous area was sampled. Measurements included tree density, species composition, biomass, diameter at breast height, and carbon stored in trees, alongside qualitative information on slope, aspect, altitude, hydrogeological instability, and vegetation damage. Multiple LiDAR drone flights produced terrain, surface, and canopy-height models to help identify climate-vulnerable areas and inform the planning process.
The second intervention was the creation of a voluntary “Forest Agreement” as a public-private governance model to implement the management plan and strengthen long-term sustainability. Potential signatories included municipalities, environmental associations, local action groups, cooperative enterprises, private citizens, and other entities operating or managing land parcels in the area; interest was also expressed from both Puglia and Molise and from PEFC Italy. The agreement’s strategic aims were to increase territorial governance capacity for sustainable management and to promote sustainable supply chains, while conserving ecosystem services, respecting biodiversity, and supporting local economy, culture, and landscapes. The draft agreement translated these aims into 13 actions, including nature-based measures to consolidate slopes and prevent fire risks and pest outbreaks linked to climate pressures. The partnership structure also assigns ongoing monitoring of effectiveness to the Forest Agreement’s Managing Body, including monitoring interventions scheduled within the management plan and wider agreement activities.
The third intervention was a pilot prescribed (controlled) burn to prevent uncontrolled wildfire, implemented over 4.84 ha after identifying suitable areas and training operators. Prescribed burning was framed as a nature-based solution that reduces fuel availability, removes or reduces fine and dead plant material susceptible to ignition, breaks vertical fuel continuity that helps fires reach canopies, and maintains or restores small open areas within and at the edges of forests. It was also treated as a silvicultural tool that can support selection of desirable species and alter stand structure to favour diameter growth and improve ecosystem stability. Because prescribed burning was not regulated by specific regional operational guidelines, local administrations began a shared pathway to explore how to address this legislative gap, and the project used the pilot to inform discussions on wider, full-scale applicability.
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