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Negative responses of highland pines to anthropogenic activities in inland Spain: a palaeoecological perspective

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Abstract

Palaeoecological evidence indicates that highland pines were dominant in extensive areas of the mountains of Central and Northern Iberia during the first half of the Holocene. However, following several millennia of anthropogenic pressure, their natural ranges are now severely reduced. Although pines have been frequently viewed as first-stage successional species responding positively to human disturbance, some recent palaeobotanical work has proposed fire disturbance and human deforestation as the main drivers of this vegetation turnover. To assess the strength of the evidence for this hypothesis and to identify other possible explanations for this scenario, we review the available information on past vegetation change in the mountains of northern inland Iberia. We have chosen data from several sites that offer good chronological control, including palynological records with microscopic charcoal data and sites with plant macro- and megafossil occurrence. We conclude that although the available long-term data are still fragmentary and that new methods are needed for a better understanding of the ecological history of Iberia, fire events and human activities (probably modulated by climate) have triggered the pine demise at different locations and different temporal scales. In addition, all palaeoxylological, palynological and charcoal results obtained so far are fully compatible with a rapid human-induced ecological change that could have caused a range contraction of highland pines in western Iberia.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank their colleagues from the Unit of Botany (Escuela de Ingeniería Forestal y del Medio Natural) for their help and support and to Elena Marinova and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. We give special thanks to Carlos Morla, Nacho García-Amorena and Elena Moreno for the input that they offered to this work. CMM holds a pre-doctoral grant from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. This research has been funded by the projects CGL2008-06005 BOS and CGL2009-0698 BOS (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Madrid).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Silvopascicultura, Escuela de Ingeniería Forestal y del Medio Natural, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, s/n, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Juan M. Rubiales, César Morales-Molino & Salvia García Álvarez

  2. Departamento de Biología (Botánica), Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, C/Darwin 2, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    César Morales-Molino & Mercedes García-Antón

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  1. Juan M. Rubiales
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  2. César Morales-Molino
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  3. Salvia García Álvarez
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  4. Mercedes García-Antón
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Correspondence to Juan M. Rubiales.

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Communicated by E. Marinova.

J. M. Rubiales and C. Morales-Molino contributed equally to this paper.

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Rubiales, J.M., Morales-Molino, C., García Álvarez, S. et al. Negative responses of highland pines to anthropogenic activities in inland Spain: a palaeoecological perspective. Veget Hist Archaeobot 21, 397–412 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-011-0330-2

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