Where have all the forest gone, long time passing

The paleopalinological diagrams produced in the past fifty years prove that the landscape of the Iberian Peninsula had a forest matrix during the major part of the Holocene. Forest cover regression is evident in NW Iberia pollen profiles since the IV mil. BC. Classical authors already indentify man’s disturbance as the main driver of forest waning. A.X.P. Coutinho, a fundamental personage in the history of Portuguese botany and sylviculture, starts his degree thesis (1882) with the known F.R. Chateaubriand’s quotation “Forests precede civilizations, and deserts follow them”, affirming the thorny co‐existence between forests and human land use. Historians generally relate forest cover decline with wood use and the expansion of arable land and animalrearing. In Iberian Peninsula there is also a tendency to attribute a particular impact to the naval industry of the XV and XVI centuries. Based in a simple quantitative approach with data gathered in the first half of XX century, when an organic society (sensu E.A. Wrigley) prevailed in NE Portugal, I argue that nutrient mining in favor of arable soils nearby rural villages was the main driver of forest regression in the mountains of Northern Portugal.

Where have all the forest gone, long time passing Artigo de Conferência