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iForest -Biogeosciences and Forestry
IntroductionLandscapes with cork oak (Quercus suber L.) in southwestern Iberia (called montados in Portugal, dehesas in Spain) are cultural (wood-pastures) human-shaped landscapes, as defined by Manning et al. (2006). Despite strong disturbances caused by changes in human activity, these open woodland ecosystems mimic natural ecosystems (Joffre et al. 1999, Pereira & Fonseca 2003. Their high biodiversity (Bugalho et al. 2011) contributes to the heterogeneity of the landscape mosaic, including (open) woodlands, shrublands, and open farmland (Vallejo et al. 2006), and to the existing nested, multifunctional spatial structure, as characterized by Santos & Thorne (2010).In the last 50 years, imminent multiple changes, including agricultural conversion and new forest plantations (Martínez et al. 2010), have drastically affected the sustainability of Mediterranean woodland ecosystems, leading to their classification as at-risk native biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al. 2000). Assessment of the dynamics of these landscapes and the identification of the driving factors responsible for the current change processes are thus strongly needed.Recent changes reported for cork oak woodland landscapes were mainly related to stressful environmental conditions (e.g., soil type and hydrological regime - Costa et al. 2008Costa et al. , 2010, disturbance regimes (e.g., wildfire occurrence -Moreira et al. 2001), vulnerable agricultural economy (changing the incentive structure of successive Common Agricultural Policy reforms of the European Union), and labor force availability (PintoCorreia 2000, Plieninger 2006. These changes usually result in: (i) a more intense land use (e.g., higher grazing pressure, modern permanent-crop farming systems, or eucalyptus plantations); and (ii) an extended land use (e.g., shrubland encroachment in set-aside or burnt areas); and, therefore, (iii) a shift from the traditional multifunctional landscape to different singlefunction landscapes.Information on oak woodland landscape dynamics has been reported in Spain for cork oak and holm oak (Quercus ilex) dehesas (Cano et al. 2003, Plieninger 2006, and for mixed forests of cork oak and Algerian oak (Quercus canariensis -Urbieta et al. 2008), which emphasized the effect of environmental factors (climate and physiographical conditions) on oak woodland mosaic shifts. In California, for Quercus spp. woodlands, Huntsinger & Bartolome (1992) and Santos & Thorne (2010) concluded that different combinations of management intensities decisively affected oak woodland restoration and conservation. For southern Portugal, shifting rates and patterns of cork oak woodlands have been reported by Acácio et al. (2009), Costa et al. (2009, 2011. In these studies, changes in oak woodland landscapes always result in effective net losses of open farmland and cork oak woodlands, and in an expansion of forest plantations (pine and eucalyptus) or shrubland. However, none of the aforementioned studies analyzed where and how oak woodland land...