Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Compared to timber logging for construction or trading, firewood collection has
been a more widespread land use practice in the Mediterranean mountains. This
is because mountain people could use alternative, more reliable and durable con-
struction materials for their homes in several regions (e.g. stones). However, they
still needed firewood for cooking and heating, and its collection was practised
around the villages within walking distance, with no need for roads or trucks for
transportation. It can be considered as the main driver of land use changes around
the villages.
In addition to firewood collection, charcoal making has also been a land use
practice of mountain people for ensuring an alternative source of fuel for cooking
and heating. This had a greater impact on forests than firewood gathering. Charcoal
was often used for commercial purposes to meet the demand of distant markets
located in the lowlands and the urban centres.
After the Second World War, the demand for firewood and charcoal in many
mountain communities was reduced or even ceased altogether as populations de-
creased and households switched to modern sources of energy such as electricity
for cooking and oil for heating.
8.3.2 Pastoralism
Pastoralism has been a dominant economic activity in the Mediterranean Basin
since humans domesticated sheep, goats and cattle in the Neolithic period and used
them as a source of food and fibre. Once they were introduced, livestock became
part of the environment, with which they evolved together over the millennia. Their
impact was clearly related to human history, being high at periods with high human
populations or adverse political conditions (e.g. wars) and low at periods with low
human populations or with political stability and economic prosperity.
In ancient times, livestock husbandry was closely related to arable agriculture,
suggesting that animals were kept near the farms; there is no evidence for long-
distance movements such as transhumance (Papanastasis et al., 2010). Later, live-
stock husbandry became more independent of arable agriculture and also moved to
the Mediterranean mountains in order to make use of their forage resources during
the summer, when the lowlands could not provide feed to the animals due to the
seasonality of the Mediterranean climate. The complementary exploitation of for-
age resources between highlands and lowlands, known as transhumance, became a
common practice in the mountains of all Mediterranean countries and resulted in a
complex and widespread network of routes - called canadas in Spain (Figure 8.2),
drailles in France, fratturi in Italy and diadromoi in Greece (Ruiz and Ruiz, 1986;
Ispikoudis et al., 2004; Biber, 2010). In Spain, transhumance reached its peak dur-
ing the fifth to fifteenth centuries but after the Industrial Revolution it started to
decline and accelerated dramatically during recent decades due to changes in socio-
cultural and economic factors (Ruiz and Valero, 1990).
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