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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
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.
Description
Keywords
História florestal História ambiental Portugal
Citation
Aguiar, C. (2010). Where have all the forest gone, long time passing. In Azevedo, João; Feliciano, Manuel; Castro, José; Pinto, Maria Alice (Eds) Book of abstracts of the IUFRO Landscape Ecology Working Group International Conference: Forest Landscapes and Global Change ‐ New Frontiers in Management, Conservation and Restoration. Bragança: IPB, IUFRO. p. 42-43. ISBN 9789727451111