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Mediterranean Forests, Woods and Shrublands

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Abstract

In the 1980s and 1990s, research by A.T. Grove and Oliver Rackham effectively demolished the ‘ruined landscape theory’ of the Mediterranean region, which had argued that millennia of human activity had degraded landscapes that were formerly more forested than at present. In fine detail, they examined all the different strands and arguments that underpinned this, to show that there were, until the mid to late twentieth century, few signs of climatic change and accelerated erosion. They did, however, observe new threats to Mediterranean landscapes, from agricultural intensification and land abandonment. Using CORINE land cover data, this chapter examines how intensification and abandonment have impacted forests, woods and shrubland cover, in the past two decades. It also reviews how twenty-first century approaches to landscape and biodiversity conservation are valuing traditional tree’d landscapes in new ways. Here the focus is on ecosystem services provided by forests, woods and shrublands including payments to farmers and landowners to maintain these services.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The extent of the Mediterranean Biogeographical region is defined by the CORINE project. Data for this area were extracted from CORINE Land Cover 1990–2000 and 2000–2006 datasets and analysed in ArcMap2010. It covers only the European Mediterranean countries (including Turkey) and not those of North Africa.

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  1. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Harriet Allen

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  1. Harriet Allen
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  1. University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Max Martin

  2. University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Vinita Damodaran

  3. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Rohan D'Souza

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Allen, H. (2019). Mediterranean Forests, Woods and Shrublands. In: Martin, M., Damodaran, V., D'Souza, R. (eds) Geography in Britain after World War II. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28323-0_8

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