Stima dei flussi di carbonio degli ecosistemi forestali italiani attraverso dati telerilevati ed ancillari.

Forests play an important role within numerous bio-geo-chemical cycles among which those of nitrogen and carbon. In particular, forests can behave as carbon sink by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. For this reason, and in view of global climate changes, it is important to quantify the amount of carbon stocked within Italian forest ecosystems. This is the objective of the FIRB project C_FORSAT financed by MIUR up to 2013. Among the available methodologies (eddy-covariance, remote sensing and bio-geo-chemical models), those based on the combined use of ecosystem simulation model and remotely sensed data are the most promising. They in fact enable to estimate all ecosystem processes (GPP, NPP and NEE) based on the knowledge of the species and the environment in which these live. Moreover, they offer the possibility to obtain spatial information with a high temporal frequency. The model BIOME-BGC is particularly useful to this aim after proper calibration and validation for the main Italian forest types. It requires numerous data layers, among which daily meteorological data are the most difficult to obtain for the whole national territory. This contribution summirezes the main methodological steps and focuses on the creation of a daily meteorological database, which is utilized to drive the simulation of Mediterranean macchia.