Ecosystem Services: Lessons From the Past for a Sustainable Future - Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change - page 131

investigated long-term changes in biodiversity and provisioning ecosystem services along a
transect from central Europe to the Mediterranean. They examined multiproxy palaeoeco-
logical evidence from Lobsigensee, on the Swiss Plateau, Lago di Origlio, southern Pre-Alps,
Massaciuccoli, Tuscany, and Gorgo Basso, Sicily. The sites were located along an environmen-
tal transect through temperate to Mediterranean climates and included a cross section of
vegetation types: European beech forest, mixed fir-oak, deciduous and evergreen oak, and
evergreen oak-olive-mastic forests. The region is also culturally highly diverse, and includes
anthropogenically derived landscapes in areas where forests have been cleared for grazing,
crop cultivation, and settlement (Colombaroli and Tinner 2013). Though some fire-sensitive
forest types were lost, Palynological Richness Indices (PRI) suggested increasing biodiversity
from start of the Neolithic (c. 5500 years bp) and intensifying in the Bronze and Iron Ages
(c. 3,000-2,000 years bp), when agrarian and pastoralist societies employed intermediate
levels of fire, and patchy forest clearance created heterogeneous landscapes with areas of
grasslands, heaths, shrublands, orchards, maquis and garrigues (Gil-Romera et al. 2010,
Colombaroli and Tinner 2013). Similarly, palaeoecological studies from Gádor, southern
Spain showed highest pollen richness from c. 1,700 years bp when a combination of climate
change and anthropogenic disturbance created heterogeneous landscapes with patchy forest
cover (see Chapter 7) (Gil-Romera et al. 2010).
Land abandonment can lead to declining biodiversity and associated loss of ecosystem
services. Colonization of former pastures by trees can homogenize landscapes and reduce
habitat available to open-land species (see Chapter 7) (Antrop 2005, Stoate et al. 2009, Pereira
et al. 2010, Gustavsson et al. 2012, Barthel et al. 2013, Colombaroli and Tinner 2013, Dahlström
et al. 2013). Environmental degradation and biodiversity decline through the loss of trad-
itional management is a facet of rural land abandonment (RLA) (Weissteiner et al. 2011, Milcu
et al. 2014). For example, in Mediterranean Europe, rural depopulation and abandonment
driven by socioeconomic changes, as well as afforestation with flammable species, have
increased the frequency of wildfires and affected hydrology, soil properties and erosion (see
Chapter 4) (Shakesby 2011).
A case study from Regional Park of the Apuane Alps in Cardoso, Tuscany, shows how land-
scape and vegetation have responded to changing management over the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries (Agnoletti 2007). Agnoletti developed a 'Historical and Cultural Evalua-
tion Approach' (HCEA) to analyse and compare landscape data and management from 1832
to the present (Figure 6.6a). The results of analysis of 1832 land surveys, aerial photographs
from 1954 and 2000, as well as written and oral sources, showed that there has been a dra-
matic decrease in landscape diversity and biodiversity (Agnoletti 2007). The complexity of
the landscape mosaic was reduced due to reforestation of abandoned fields and pastures,
leading to an increase in woodland cover from 30% to 77% over the study period (Figure 6.6b).
In addition, landslides were associated with the abandonment of terraces, which collapsed
without maintenance. The elements most likely to disappear from the landscape are mead-
ows, pastures, pastures with trees and cultivated lands, particularly at high elevations; these
elements urgently need a conservation strategy if they are to remain in the landscape (Agno-
letti 2007).