Management of Montados and Dehesas for High Nature Value: an interdisciplinary pathway

Abstract

Mediterranean oak woodlands, Montados in Portugal and Dehesas in Spain have long been acknowledged as potential land use systems of high nature and social value providing relevant ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, these systems are now under severe threat, both due to abandonment in certain areas and overuse in others, extremes that may be limited by appropriate management practices and strategies. The High Nature Value concept can be a pathway for the understanding and assessment of management practices best adapted to the balance of the Montado and Dehesa, and also to the assessment of the thresholds of change, so that the long term sustainability of the Montado systems is preserved. This special issue aims to contribute for the understanding of how the Montado and Dehesa classification as High Nature Value may be a path for sustainable management. This classification can be achieved by different ways and implies different components of the Montado, and thus the first four papers of this special issue address different approaches and methodologies for the identification of HNV Dehesas and Montados, the following seven papers deal mostly with the effect of management practices on biodiversity and other Dehesas and Montados values and finally the last two papers address the causes for Montado decline and suggest mitigation measures for that decline.

Ethnoagroforestry: integration of biocultural diversity for food sovereignty in Mexico

“…Such understanding would contribute to stop the unfortunate losing of the Cinderella agroforestry systems, that is happening throughout the world. The Cinderella term makes reference to agroforestry systems unrecognized and forgotten at global level but with high relevance at regional and local scale for food production, environmental protection, conservation and recovering, and social wellbeing [20]. The process of enhancing agroforestry systems [21].…”

The Portuguese Montado: A Complex System under Tension between Different Land Use Management Paradigms

“…This is clear from the gradual timely increase in the number of patches and decrease of their surface in the Alentejo region and the Portuguese region with the biggest concentration and best preserved Montados (Montado occupies 40% of the region's land cover). Regarding the plant health of the system, ICNF verified that more than 50% of the Montado with Quercus rotundifolia and 68% with Quercus suber were characterized by symptoms of slight decline, while in 4 and 10%, respectively, of the aforementioned systems, these symptoms are considered severe [10,13]. Nonetheless, the Montado area decrease and health status should be linked with the stand development stage, as otherwise the results can be misleading.…”

“…Montados and Dehesas spread across the central and southern regions of the Iberian Peninsula, where the dominant climate is warm-summer Mediterranean, have poor and shallow soils and strong rainfall and temperature irregularities [8,9]. The Montado occupies ~1.2 million ha [6,10], much of it in the central municipalities of Alentejo (Figure 1). The property structure is largely dominated by large-family-owned estates, normally ranging between 200 and 2000 ha.…”

“…The Montado is characterized by a low-density tree canopy dominated by Holm and Cork Oaks (Quercus suber and Quercus rotundifolia, respectively), which can be intermixed in some areas with other tree species, including Ash (Fraxinus spp.) occupying the most humid soils, chestnut trees (Castanea sativa) in wetter and mountain climates, and other largely riparian species in the proximity of river courses, with natural or cultivated grassland in the undercover [10]. The main use of such grassland is for extensive livestock grazing, with herds of sheep or goats and Iberian pigs or cattle, depending largely on the type of terrain, soils, and characteristics of the pastures.…”

“…While a few farm units breed mixed livestock, a majority of them focus only on one species, increasingly in cattle. The extensive nature of the grazing activity is justified by the strongly limiting biophysical factors, including shallow and poor soils and semidry climate, which do not generally allow for intensive grazing or any alternative or intensive agricultural land use [10].…”