Landscapes Forest and Global Change - ESA - Escola Superior ...

F.J. Gómez et al. 2010. Land use changes and mixed forest dynamics. The case of Montiferru Mountains
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1.2 Brief Montiferru’s environmental history
The Montiferru Mountains are an archetypical Mediterranean mountain socioecosystem due to
its biodiversity and environmental history. Its contemporaneous development starts at XIX th
century when early signs of non domestic land uses increase become apparent, mainly due to
navy and pre-industrial activities (glass, leather workshops, etc.) (Beccu 2000). During this
period, characterized by organic economy strong dependent of wood for construction and
firewood and charcoal for fuel, forest raw material consumption grows drove by the expansion
of iron and steel industries, railway and sea transport and due to population growth and its
demand. Linked to these and other factors like the increase of land plough derived from
agricultural and subsistence crisis, forestland covers become highly reduced in all Italy and
especially in mountain systems like Sardinian ones at latest XIX th and the beginning of XX th
century.
First signs of land use shift scenario, based on industrial and inorganic-based model, arrived in
the decade of 1930-40 when firewood and charcoal consumption drops while fossil fuels
increases (Agnoletti 2003), this trend arrives to mountain socioecosystems later meaning the
beginning of rural economies crisis. It was then when changes in primary sector activities
become apparent, showed in forestry in two general ways; models specialized in fast-growth
wood and dedicated to paper and pulp emergent industry rise and the most extended traditional
uses linked to slow-growth wood, firewood and charcoal decrease and in most cases become
abandoned few decades later. Other indicators, like rural exodus processes, reinforce this
socioeconomic scenario shift characterized by traditional rural economies’ crisis; at Montiferru
population decreased ca. 24% since 1960s (Mura 1995).
In the last decades of XX th century the massif shows incipient signs of another socioeconomic
scenario shift like the increase of biodiversity management and protection measures and the rise
of third economic activities. As a result, nowadays the Montiferru still conserves aspects of its
traditional Mediterranean mountain area character but post-industrial socioeconomic scenario
tends to be predominant.
2. Methodology
2.1 Object of study
In the massif of Montiferru oak (Quercus pubescens Mill.) and holm oak (Quercus ilex L.)
mixed forest patches occurs in the geographic transition from the upper mesomediterranean to
submediterranean wet-temperate climate conditions, in the altitudinal range comprised between
750 and 950 meters a.s.l. In the context of Mediterranean basin, these forestland covers begin its
actual dynamics after Youger Dryas (11.000 B.C.) and undergo different fluctuations in its
composition until the frontier between Subboreal and Subatlantic (aprox. 3.000 B.C.), when
palinological records show an evident decline of Q.pubescens and a increase of Q.ilex (Suc
1984). Two hypotheses try to explain this event; biotic arguments related to the capacity of
holm oak to compete with other trees, and the consideration of human-induced effects (Pons and
Quézel 1985; Barbero et al 1990). At this point, centuries of human intervention on
Mediterranean forestland upsets the balance between oak and holm oak populations, favoring
Q.ilex mainly due to its fuel value and its food value for cattle in detriment of Q.pubescens,
taxon that in the case of Sardinia and Corsica becomes very reduced (Gamisans 1977). In that
sense, more or less isolated character of mixed forest areas contributes to assume the role of
these entities as indicators of global change manifestations, especially of land use changes
processes derived from socioenomic scenario shifts (Lomolino, 2000).
Forest Landscapes and Global Change-New Frontiers in Management, Conservation and Restoration. Proceedings of the IUFRO Landscape Ecology
Working Group International Conference, September 21-27, 2010, Bragança, Portugal. J.C. Azevedo, M. Feliciano, J. Castro & M.A. Pinto (eds.)
2010, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Bragança, Portugal.