Which has better natural scenery, California or Italy? (richest, pine)

[Iaskwhy]

Originally Posted by tom77falcons

Well if Italy still has wolves, and CA has none, and the wolf is an apex predator, I would say Italy has areas with more intact natural ecosystems than CA. If the wolf is gone from CA, then the ecosystem is not complete and fully natural. I detect some jealousy from you that CA killed all of its wolves and yet Italy managed to save some. Not at all surprising in the US where the attitude is that God gave Americans the natural world to do with it what they pleased.

Grey wolves were never present through much of California though, so your point is moot. I would love wolves and brown bears to be reintroducted to where they belong.

[Urania93]

Fauna can be an interesting topic, because it is probably quite different
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauna_of_Italy

Talking about bears, the situation is a little complicated.
In Italy there are two different sub-species of brown bear. One is called "Marsican Brown Bear", and lives in the Apennines forests of central Italy. They ricked seriously the extinction, but recent protection projects allowed a little increasing in their population. Their number seems to change according to the source I'm looking to, but it seems to be comprehended between 30 and 50 exemplars.
Then there are other brown bears, the same ones you can find in the rest of Europe, also in central and eastern Alps. In eastern Alps you can see the bears that arrive from Slovenia (in that country there are still a lot of bears), while in central Alps (trentino) some bears were recently reintroduced. In Trentino last year there were something like 40-50 new bears. In Easter Alps there are other 5-15 bears, who arrived from Slovenia.
So they are still really few, but with the recent measures used for increasing their number seem to work.

The wolf population instead is much larger. The sub-specie of grey wolf present in Italy is called "italian wolf". Their number was really little in the 70s, but the government decided to declared them as a "protected specie", and so their number increased a lot. Now there are more or less 1500 exemplars concentrated on the Apennines and western Alps (according to wikipedia https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canis_...us#Popolazione ). In recent years some wolves have been seen also here at my place.

[Italian (x)lurker]

I think I'm gonna (when have time) list a chart based on single natural features:
mountains
glaciers
caves
forests
lakes
rivers
beaches
marine grottoes
islands and archipelagos
volcanoes
deserts
canyons
falls
diversity per square mile/km
etc

[Iaskwhy]

Originally Posted by Italian (x)lurker

I think I'm gonna (when have time) list a chart based on single natural features:
mountains
glaciers
caves
forests
lakes
rivers
beaches
marine grottoes
islands and archipelagos
volcanoes
deserts
canyons
falls
diversity per square mile/km
etc

Using your criteria

mountains- California
glaciers- California
caves- Don't know enough to say.
forests- California
lakes- Italy
rivers- Don't know, probably CA but I could be wrong
beaches- Depends on what you like, warm water swimming-Italy, cold water nature-CA Tie
marine grottoes- Grotto implies human use
islands and archipelagos- Italy
volcanoes- California
deserts- California
canyons- California
falls- California
diversity per square mile/km- California

[nei]

I'd disagree strongly with mountains, that seems an easy one for Italy. Ditto with glaciers. Unless you're going by how untouched the mountains are. Coastal mountains I'd say California, though Italy has some as well.

[xander.XVII]

Volcanoes for California? Vesuvius? Etna? Stromboli?
Plus, we shan't forget that California is 50 % wider than Italy with almost 25% people less.

[Iaskwhy]

Originally Posted by xander.XVII

Volcanoes for California? Vesuvius? Etna? Stromboli?
Plus, we shan't forget that California is 50 % wider than Italy with almost 25% people less.

Lassen, Mammoth, Long Valley and Shasta are more impressive.

A lower population means more nature in general, they go together. You don't readjust for the population, that's silly.

[Urania93]

I was not sure about how intense the activity of volcanoes in California is, so I looked at the wikipedia pages. I found that the ones you named are still active, but that they didn't erupt in the last decades.
Etna and Stromboli are not so impressive on their own, but because the eruptive activity is really frequent (nearly continuous).
In fact Stromboli normally has a continuous eruption, with some episodes of higher intensity that usually occur every few years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromboli
Etna has a slightly less continuous activity, but again there is some kind of activity nearly every year, and often eruptions continues for months if not years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Etna
Those volcanoes are both among the most active in the world.
Mount Vesuvius doesn't have continuous eruptions, and it is a positive thing because now its activity is mainly explosive. It is also considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes worldwide, because it is really near to the city of Naples and other neighbor towns, that in case of eruption risk to have the same destiny as Pompeii. The last real eruption occurred in 1944, but secondary activities are nearly always visible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Vesuvius
Secondary volcanic activity is also present in the adjacent area of the Phlegraean Fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegraean_Fields

[Italian (x)lurker]

As regards to volcanoes and everything that snorts from deep hot hell inside our Earth I'd give an 8 to California and 9 to Italy

California has some impressive volcanoes but I'm not aware wether they're still really active like ours, you also have calderas, next to the Mammoth, the Lavic Lake field with extinct cones (Pisgah and Amboy above all), cinder cones and lava beds in the Lessen vulcanic park, the small mud vulcanoes nearby Salton Sea

there's no doubt Ca performs a very good scenery about it

but Italy have it all too and something more
we have calderas in Sicily (I confess I didn't know until a few months two kids have been burned to death), a few miles west of Naples (Campi Flegrei), in Tuscany (Larderello geysers)
we're the only country in the whole Europe with active volcanoes, Vesuvio and Etna are simply majestic and thanks to being adjiacent to large cities they look even more impressive, climbing the Etna is an almost lunar experience...

we also have Eolie islands, that are vulcanic islands (somethin like the Hawaii) and one more thing, a submarine one, the Marsili, the greatest volcano in Europe plus a lot of now extinct cones, sometimes filled with water

that's why I give Italy an extra point, because we have something more than Cali


Stromboli







Mount Etna





the Google Street View climbing the mountain (but he didn't reach the top, I checked it out)

[forgotten username]

I'll add that I was on a plane last week and seeing the Stromboli aligned with the Etna in the background just after seeing the Vesuve is quite a thing !