Abstract
At some point in their history, most forests in the Mediterranean Basin have been subjected to intensive management or converted to agriculture land. Knowing how forest plant communities recovered after the abandonment of forest-management or agricultural practices (including livestock grazing) provides a basis for investigating how previous land management have affected plant species diversity and composition in forest ecosystems. Our study investigated the consequences of historical “land management” practices on present-day Mediterranean forests by comparing species assemblages and the diversity of (i) all plant species and (ii) each ecological group defined by species’ habitat preferences and successional status (i.e., early-, mid-, and late-successional species). We compared forest stands that differed both in land-use history and in successional stage. In addition, we evaluated the value of those stands for biodiversity conservation. The study revealed significant compositional differentiation among stands that was due to among-stand variations in the diversity (namely, species richness and evenness) of early-, intermediate-, and late-successional species. Historical land management has led to an increase in compositional divergences among forest stands and the loss of late-successional forest species.
Highlights
Most of today’s unmanaged Mediterranean forests were once under intensive management [1,2,3]
In the ten oak stands in the Central Pre-Pyrenees, we identified 206 vascular plant species (S1 Appendix)
Our study has demonstrated the importance of previous land-use and forest management in shaping the development of plant species assemblages and the richness and evenness of plant species
Summary
Most of today’s unmanaged Mediterranean forests were once under intensive management [1,2,3]. Since antiquity, those forests have been extensively cleared, and the rate of forest loss accelerated in the 18th and 19th C. In Euro-Mediterranean countries, in particular, many of the natural forests were coppiced for timber and firewood, which created coppices that differed in their management intensity and the time since coppicing had ceased. Abandonment and forest encroachment occurred in several phases, which created a PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0139031. Abandonment and forest encroachment occurred in several phases, which created a PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0139031 September 23, 2015
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