The soil-conscious forestry and the forbidden apple

In this article, we propose a silvicultural approach that takes soil health into account. Using a biblical metaphor, the first chapter highlights the forest’s critical role in the planet’s future, emphasizing that forest biodiversity is essential for sustaining a planet inhabited by complex life forms like humans. The second chapter focuses to the soil, explaining how the biological dynamics of the soil are interconnected with the forest cycle, demonstrating that vegetation and soil form a continuous, co-evolving system. The third chapter explores the possibility of extending the forest cycle to restore soil functionality, illustrating how the recycling of the forest’s biological past facilitates the emergence of a new, evolving soil-vegetation system. Examples of forest management practices in France, Italy, and Switzerland are presented, including graphs and mathematical models depicting the evolution of organic carbon in the soil and the distribution of tree stems by diameter, age, and stature. The description of uneven-aged Swiss forests, featuring fir and beech, is sourced from the Helvetica Pro-Silva website.