Cork Oak Landscapes, Promised or Compromised Lands? A Case Study of a Traditional Cultural Landscape in Southern Spain

Abstract

Cork oak landscapes are considered a model for the integration of sustainable land-use and biodiversity conservation. These traditional cultural landscapes, shaped through centuries, are in sharp decline in the Iberian Peninsula due to the polarization of their usage: from agricultural intensification to land abandonment. This study presents an in-depth analysis of the main drivers affecting cork oak landscapes' management and structure in Berrocal, Huelva Province, Spain since 1940. Results show that the main causes for the decline of these landscapes has been the abandonment of the traditional multi-functionality of the dehesa, largely driven by demographic changes, and the increasing occurrence of major disturbances, such as wildfires, drought and diseases. This case illustrates how the abandonment of obsolete land-uses transforms traditional landscapes, sparking questions about what the goals of traditional landscape conservation should be and about possible alternative management options, their associated conservation benefits and risks.

Agroforestry—The Next Step in Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture

“…Forest-based foraging systems for poultry and hogs can decrease the need for grain and provide surroundings closer to these species' natural habitat [106]. The cork oak dehesas of the Mediterranean are an example of a multifunctional landscape that has endured for hundreds of years, providing grass and acorns for grazing livestock and a valuable cash crop in the form of bark for making traditional corks [107].…”

Governance Discourses Reflecting Tensions in a Multifunctional Land Use System in Decay; Tradition Versus Modernity in the Portuguese Montado

“…This is grounded in the different origins and contributions of the three discourses ( Table 2) but remains largely non-explicit to policy makers and other agents (e.g., market operators) making decisions at the highest levels. Thus, with time, many public policy tools with impact on these complex farming systems may have led to contradictory practices at the farm level, driving the degradation of their main ecological, cultural, and land-use components [53].…”

“…This is reflected in a push towards intensification of the system and a simplification of its complexity, with a focus on beef production as the most important outcome of the system. In effect, this leads to a rapid degradation of the system's capacity to provide sustainable grazing practices [47,48], multi-functionality [49,50], and the related delivery of ecosystem services [51,52], including those related to the cultural values of rural and historical Mediterranean landscapes [53,54].…”

A systematic review of biodiversity and demographic change: A misinterpreted relationship?

“…Research is lacking on long-term effects of demographic changes in the past more than 10 years ago leading to effects on biodiversity nowadays. If then, these studies refer to the topic of land abandonment (Angelstam et al 2003;Acha and Newing 2015). Total number of occurrences per category of demographic change addressed.…”

“…For demographic change, the results diverge depending on, e.g. the type of poverty indicator (Fisher and Christopher 2006), using within household variability versus household numbers (Carter et al 2014), adding housing units in addition to land cover (Lepczyk et al 2008), integrating the temporal effects of demographic processes of land abandonment (Angelstam et al 2003;Acha and Newing 2015;López-Bao et al 2015), or integrating gender (Swierk and Madigosky 2014). Second, the type of human activities had considerably different effects.…”