Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
environment by breaking up habitats and resulting in severe soil erosion. Additional
modern technological interventions include mountain homes, solar and wind energy
generators, and small-scale hydropower plants.
Finally, among the environmental factors, geology and geomorphology are im-
portant factors in causing land use changes. Soil erosion is usually caused by human
activities but it is largely associated with the nature of the parent material as well.
Schist, for example, is more erosive than limestone but vegetation recovers from
destruction faster on the former than on the latter due to the different soil formation
processes (Conacher and Sala, 1998). However, soil erosion may be also caused by
tectonics. Grove and Rackham (2001) argue that the primary determinant of erosion
in the Mediterranean Europe of historical times was tectonics rather than human
activities. Other scholars (e.g. van Andel
et al.,
1990; Butzer, 2003) disagree and
consider human activities to be the primary cause of historical soil erosion.
Climate change is another environmental factor causing land use changes. Al-
though vegetation in the Mediterranean mountains has adapted to the Mediterranean
climate, characterized by a cool and rainy winter period followed by a warm and
dry summer period, extreme events may result in significant alterations. Such events
may be a prolonged dry period (drought) or a torrential rain event leading to land-
slides and floods (Grove and Rackham, 2001). These extreme events are expected
to become more frequent with the climate change that the Mediterranean region has
experienced over the last four decades and that is predicted to continue in the near
future (Regato and Salman, 2008).
8.3 Major land uses and their historical evolution
8.3.1 Wood cutting
Wood cutting has been an important land use practice for the survival of mountain
people, who use wood as a construction material for their homes, as a fuel and as
a source of income. However, given the inaccessibility of the Mediterranean moun-
tains, it is unlikely that commercial logging was practised widely in the mountain
forests in the past. Not until the nineteenth century, when roads, trucks, railroads,
cable lifts and other devices made mountain forests accessible, did this level of
exploitation become feasible (McNeill,1992).
Nevertheless, there are disastrous cases of commercial logging in the past. One
such example is the destruction of the cypress forests of the mountains of Crete in
the Bronze Age to provide construction material for the Minoan navy (Tsoumis,
1986). Another case is the clearing of the cedar forests of Mount Lebanon by the
Phoenicians, who became famous sea traders at the end of the second millennium
BC thanks to their cedar ships (Thirwood, 1981). In the classical period, Athens was
short of timber for construction and it had to import it from more wooded regions
of Greece (Macedonia) and elsewhere (Sicily) (Meiggs, 1982).
