Abstract:Montado decline has been reported since the end of the nineteenth century in southern Portugal and increased markedly during the 1980s. Consensual reports in the literature suggest that this decline is due to a number of factors, such as environmental constraints, forest diseases, inappropriate management, and socioeconomic issues. An assessment on the pattern of montado distribution was conducted to reveal how the extent of land management, environmental variables, and spatial factors contributed to montado area loss in southern Portugal from 1990 to 2006. A total of 14 independent variables, presumably related to montado loss, were grouped into three sets: environmental variables, land management variables, and spatial variables. From 1990 to 2006, approximately 90,054 ha disappeared in the montado area with an estimated annual regression rate of 0.14 % year-1. Variation partitioning showed that the land management model accounted for the highest percentage of explained variance (51.8 %), followed by spatial factors (44.6 %) and environmental factors (35.5 %). These results indicate that most variance in the large-scale distribution of recent montado loss is due to land management, either alone or in combination with environmental and spatial factors. The full GAM model showed that different livestock grazing is one of the most important variables affecting montado loss. This suggests that optimum carrying capacity should decrease to 0.18-0.60 LU ha-1 for livestock grazing in montado under current ecological conditions in southern Portugal. This study also showed that land abandonment, wildfire, and agricultural practices (to promote pastures, crops or fallow lands) were three significant variables influencing montado loss.

This paper analyzes the concept of nature‐based solutions as instruments to turn anthromes more nature compatible, efficient, causing less degradation, and developing new biodiversity hotspots. It is mainly focused on solutions using living organisms (in particular plants and microorganisms) to perform functions such as those of soil‐ and water‐bioengineering interventions in order to ensure the safety of human infrastructures and constructions in contexts of conflict between natural processes and human needs. Further, it handles the problematic of reintroducing natural processes and functions in the built environment (urban, industrial, infrastructures, etc.) in order to recover, recreate, or reinvent nature in humanized landscapes and developing a more creative relation between humans and natural elements, processes, and functions. It presents, furthermore, the contribution of natural solutions to a wide variety of decontamination processes and prevention and recovery of degraded land and natural resources. Finally, we discuss the way these solutions can be implemented and the cultural, organizational, administrative and governance, paradigmatic, and practice changes it implies. Examples are given on the different issues presented as well on the possible implementation solutions.

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• Transitions in Mediterranean oak woodlands (montados) were assessed; • Low spatial connectedness in montado landscape increases its vulnerability; • Changes were mostly explained by fire characteristics and spatial factors; • Large fires have a major role in transitions from montado to pioneer communities. Fire is infrequent in the oak woodlands of southern Portugal (montado) but large and severe fires affected these agro-forestry systems in [2003][2004][2005]. We hypothesised transition from forest to shrubland as a fire-driven process and investigated the links between fire incidence and montado change to other land cover types, particularly those related with the presence of pioneer communities (generically designed in this context as "transitions to early-successional communities"). We present a landscape-scale framework for assessing the probability of transition from montado to pioneer communities, considering three sets of explanatory variables: montado patterns in 1990 and prior changes from montado to early-successional communities (occurred between 1960 and 1990), fire patterns, and spatial factors. These three sets of factors captured 78.2% of the observed variability in the transitions from montado to pioneer vegetation. The contributions of fire patterns and spatial factors were high, respectively 60.6% and 43.4%, the influence of montado patterns and former changes in montado being lower (34.4%). The highest amount of explained variation in the occurrence of transitions from montado to earlysuccessional communities was related to the pure effect of fire patterns (19.9%). Low spatial connectedness in montado landscape can increase vulnerability to changes, namely to pioneer vegetation, but the observed changes were mostly explained by fire characteristics and spatial factors. Among all metrics used to characterize fire patterns and extent, effective mesh size provided the best modelling results. Transitions from montado to pioneer communities are more likely in the presence of high values of the effective mesh size of total burned area. This G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o

Ecosystem-based management Management paradigms Social drivers for conservation Governance Contracting for nature conservation a b s t r a c t The present paper addresses the conservation planning and management issues of terrestrial ecosystems with particular insight to small islands (with examples of application in the Macaronesian archipelagos of Cape Verde, Canaries, Madeira and Azores). It analyses specific conservation planning and management approaches and proposes concrete characterization and evaluation frameworks able to support decision and management processes ensuring an active and participative involvement of all concerned stakeholders. These methodological perspectives involve not only new paradigmatic approaches to the process of characterization and evaluation of environmental elements and processes as well as their use and disturbance through land use, but also regarding the individual and collective perspectives regarding benefice and supporting management behaviours. Some examples from islands of the Macaronesian archipelagos, in particular Pico in the archipelago of Azores and Santiago in the Cape Verde archipelago, are used to illustrate some possible management approaches, involving the consideration of the entire island as a conservation object and mobilizing their actors (individuals, groups, administrations or other organizations) as conscious, participative stakeholders. These examples involve possible land use and management changes and trade-off processes specific to each island that are listed and explained.