Cork Oak Woodlands On The Edge - UV

00 FM:IP Aronson xii 1/30/09 10:44 AM Page xii Contents 12. Field Techniques to Improve Cork Oak Establishment Jordi Cortina, Marian Pérez-Devesa, Alberto Vilagrosa, Mohamed Abourouh, Mahand Messaoudène, Nora Berrahmouni, Luis Neves Silva, Maria Helena Almeida, and Abdelhamid Khaldi Direct Seeding Seedling Planting Livestock Management Conclusions PART IV. Economic Analysis 13. Mixed Cork Oak–Stone Pine Woodlands in the Alentejo Region of Portugal Inocêncio S. Coelho and Pablo Campos Mixed Cork Oak and Stone Pine Woodland Areas Private Economic Benefits and Cost Valuation Methods Sustainability and Stewardship of Total Economic Value Site Profile 13.1: Monchique and Caldeirão, Portugal José M. D. Rosendo 14. Cork Oak Woodland Conservation and Household Subsistence Economy Challenges in Northern Tunisia Pablo Campos, Paola Ovando, Ali Chebil, and Hamed Daly-Hassen Case Study: Iteimia Conclusions Site Profile 14.1: Maamora, Morocco Mohamed Abourouh 15. Cost–Benefit Analysis of Cork Oak Woodland Afforestation and Facilitated Natural Regeneration in Spain Paola Ovando, Pablo Campos, José L. Oviedo, and Gregorio Montero Cork Oak Woodland, Shrubland, Pasture, and Cropland Management Scenarios Present Discounted Values of Capital Income from Cork Oak Investment and Noninvestment Scenarios Conclusions 16. Manufacture and Trade of Cork Products: An International Perspective Santiago Zapata, Francisco M. Parejo, Amélia Branco, Michele Gutierrez, J. Ignacio Jiménez Blanco, Renaud Piazzetta, and Andreas Voth 141 142 142 148 148 151 153 153 155 159 162 165 166 173 175 177 178 180 187 189

00 FM:IP Aronson 1/30/09 10:44 AM Page xiii Contents The Iberization of the Cork Business: 1920s to 1970s Manufacture and Trade of Cork Products in the Last Thirty Years: The International Scene Conclusions PART V. Challenges for the Future xiii 190 192 199 201 17. Ecoregional Planning for Biodiversity Conservation Nora Berrahmouni, Pedro Regato, Mohammed Ellatifi, Hamed Daly-Hassen, Miguel Bugalho, Sahraoui Bensaid, Mario Díaz, and James Aronson 203 Biodiversity Value and Ecosystem Services Challenges for Conservation Reconnecting Environmental, Social, and Economic Interests through Landscape Conservation Planning Conclusions Site Profile 17.1: Los Alcornocales Natural Park, Spain Teodoro Marañón 203 204 213 216 217 18. Facing Climate Change João S. Pereira, Alexandre Vaz Correia, and Richard Joffre 219 Rise in Atmospheric CO2 Concentration Rising Temperatures Effects on Communities and Ecosystems Effects at the Landscape and Regional Scales Conclusions 220 221 223 224 225 19. Simulating Function and Vulnerability of Cork Oak Woodland Ecosystems John Tenhunen, Ralf Geyer, João M. B. Carreiras, Nuno de Almeida Ribeiro, Nguyen Q. Dinh, Dennis O. Otieno, and João S. Pereira Function and Productivity as Related to Vulnerability Assessments The Pixel-Oriented Growth Model for Mediterranean Woodlands Conclusions 20. The Way Forward V. Ramon Vallejo, James Aronson, Juli G. Pausas, João S. Pereira, and Christelle Fontaine Cork Oak Decline Cork Oak Woodland Products Management Options 227 228 229 233 235 236 238 240

00 FM:IP Aronson xiv 1/30/09 10:44 AM Page xiv Contents Conservation and Restoration Coping with Uncertainty 241 242 glossary 247 references 257 editors 285 contributors 287 species index 301 index 307

00 FM:IP Aronson 1/30/09 10:44 AM Page xv preface In the Society for Ecological Restoration International Island Press book series on ecological restoration, this book is the second to focus on cultural ecosystems but the first to consider cultural landscapes as such. Unlike Old Fields: Dynamics and Restoration of Abandoned Farmland (Cramer and Hobbs, editors), we focus on a particular geographic region: the western Mediterranean. As our title indicates, our subject includes restoration, amelioration, and long-term management of landscapes whose common feature is the extraordinary cork oak tree. This shared feature gives continuity and coherence to the book, but a surprisingly large range of contexts and issues will be covered, which should be of interest to a wide readership within and outside the Mediterranean region. The ancient landscapes and land use systems we present here are richly imbued with traditional and local ecological knowledge and the biophysical consequences of past human activities. In an increasingly homogeneous and globalized world, economically speaking, these landscapes and the socioeconomic systems built around cork oak seem exceptionally pertinent to study and ponder for all those searching for sustainable, equitable, and inspiring approaches to land management in rural areas with a strong cultural and natural heritage. Genesis and Goals Scientific research on cork oak and the ecosystems where it thrives is patchy. Results are scattered and usually limited to a single discipline, such as genetics, silviculture, or the physical properties of cork, and the few broad, interregional, multidisciplinary treatments are out of date. The present book is the xv

00 FM:IP Aronson xvi 1/30/09 10:44 AM Page xvi Preface result of a 4-year European Commission–funded research program (Conservation and Restoration of European Cork Oak Woodlands [CREOAK], QLKS-CT-2002-01594) that ran from 2002 to 2006. Consortium members included researchers and engineers from Portugal, Spain, France, Algeria, Morocco, and Bulgaria, experts in a wide range of fields, including ecology, economics, genetics, ecophysiology, and silviculture. In addition, foresters, scholars, land managers, and landowners from Iberia, North Africa, Italy, and Germany were asked to consult and review the group’s research activities, and several of them have contributed to this book. The general objective of CREOAK was to tackle scientific and management obstacles impeding the restoration, natural regeneration, and integrated management of cork oak woodlands and planting in new and appropriate areas of southern Europe. This is a book about ecosystems in cultural landscapes that evolved with history and economy, but it does not dwell solely on the delivery of ecosystem goods or services. The uniqueness of the consortium resides in its holistic, interdisciplinary approach, including disciplines ranging from molecular genetics, microbial ecology, and tree ecophysiology to forestry, economics, landscape ecology, conservation science, and cultural history. As part of the CREOAK project, we have compiled a large bibliographic database on cork oak, cork oak woodlands, and cork, containing more than 1,100 items. We have also produced a precise, up-to-date digital map of cork oak distribution throughout the tree’s natural distribution area. They are available on the Island Press Web site (www.islandpress.org/). The present book provides a synthesis of the most up-to-date, practical information for anyone interested in the management of cork oak, and it is the first overview ever produced of the ecology, biogeography, and genetics of cork oak; socioeconomic settings and prospects; and restoration and active management strategies for natural cork oak woodlands and especially for the derived cultural systems. The book includes a large body of previously unpublished scientific information, with the goal of offering a timely synthesis, and novel elements to guide research programs and policy decisions concerning conservation, restoration, and sustainable landscape management. The book is intended for a broad audience concerned with the future of cultural landscapes and low–energy input land use systems, be they for commercial, environmental, or social objectives. The book is also an example of a multidisciplinary and holistic way to study an ecosystem and manage, conserve, and restore it. We hope it can serve as guide for future studies of this kind in other socioecological systems.

00 FM:IP Aronson 1/30/09 10:44 AM Page xvii Preface xvii Acknowledgments We wish to thank the European Union (CREOAK project no. QLKS-CT2002-01594). A special thank you to Associação Portuguesa de Cortiça, in Portugal, and Fundación Centro de Estudios Ambientales del Mediterráneo, in Valencia, Spain, for their financial support, which has improved the quality of this book. Also thank you to Barbara Dean, Barbara Youngblood, and all the other hard-working, dedicated colleagues at Island Press. Maria João Lourenço, in Lisbon, and Hervé Bohbot, in Montpellier, provided much help. A special thank you to Christelle Fontaine, who has been instrumental in coordinating our work, conducting back-up research and final checks, and significantly improving the quality of every single chapter. She is co-author of the final chapter and an unofficial co-editor of the entire book. The editors and contributors also express their gratitude to the chapter reviewers: Luis Díaz Balteiro, Mario Díaz Esteban, Robin Duponnois, Helder Adegar Fonseca, Luis Gil, Lynn Huntsinger, Partap K. Khanna, José Manuel Lopes Cordeiro, Roselyne Lumaret, Manuel Madeira, Daniel Mousain, Rafael N. Navarro, Luis Ocaña Bueno, Jean Christophe Paoli, Rémy Petit, Claude Plassard, Tobias Plieninger, Fernando Pulido, Jean-Yves Puyo, Pedro Regato Pajares, Rosa Ros, Agustín Rubio, Santiago Sabaté, Alvaro Soto, Fernando Valladares, Ramon Vallejo, and Thomas Vanrensburg. We dedicate this book to all the Mediterranean peoples and to the region itself, for the example it continues to provide that multicultural tolerance, conviviality, and cross-fertilization between cultures are possible and that cohabitation or reconciliation is possible between nonhuman and human processes, resulting in biodiversity, beauty, and productivity. Let us work together for a sustainable and desirable future. James Aronson João S. Pereira Juli G. Pausas October 2008

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01 Intro:IP Aronson 1/30/09 10:47 AM Page 1 introduction When uncorking a bottle of a good wine or using any of the dozens of products made from natural cork, have you ever stopped to wonder where it comes from? If so, come with us now for a trip to the western Mediterranean, home of the cork oak (Quercus suber), one of the most extraordinary trees on Earth. Whether fully clothed, in its arm-thick, fissured, light gray bark, or with brick red trunks recently undressed by a once-a-decade harvest of its corky clothing, the tree has great beauty, mystery, and charm, as writers and travelers have long recounted. The landscapes where it occurs have the same charm or even more to those who know how to read them. We travel to the western Mediterranean because today no cork oak tree grows naturally east of Tuscany, Liguria, and Sicily. And yet, four and a half millennia ago, fishing floats made of cork were used along the Nile River. Two and half millennia ago, natural cork was used throughout the eastern Mediterranean to make stoppers for earthenware jars and soles for shoes and sandals. Theophrastus (372–285 BC) described the cork oak in detail, followed by Virgil, who had Aeneas (in Aeneid VII) mention that the head covering of the soldiers of ancient Latium was “stripped bark of the cork tree.” Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) also gave a detailed description of the cork tree and the use of its bark in his Naturalis Historia XVI. Horace (65–8 BC) wrote of wine casks being sealed with cork and Columella (AD 20–75) referred to cork used in the making of beehives. Plutarch related that Camillus used cork as a life buoy for swimming. Alexander the Great is said to have avoided drowning one day while crossing a turbulent river by clinging to a large piece of cork that happened to be nearby. From North Africa we know of very few written 1

01 Intro:IP Aronson 2 1/30/09 10:47 AM Page 2 in t r od u c t i o n accounts, but it seems likely that cork oak was just as widely used, cared for, and appreciated as in southwestern Europe. So, did the cork oak tree occur in Greece and further east millennia ago, or was cork simply imported as a product of commerce, accompanied by tales of the tree growing farther west? The second explanation is more plausible. As we shall learn in the opening chapters of this book, the natural distribution of cork oak trees in the western Mediterranean region but not in the east seems to have been constant at least since the last European ice age, which ended eleven thousand years ago. What is the story in the western Mediterranean? What are the cork oak ecosystems, economy, and landscapes like there today? For the last few centuries, in many parts of the Iberian Peninsula, parts of France and Italy, and northwestern Africa, people have consistently protected, managed, and indeed cherished the cork oak tree, not only for its thick, useful bark but also for its shade, foliage, and wood; for its beauty, longevity, and cultural significance; and for the acorns. Some years at least, the acorns of cork oak provide a copious feast for domestic livestock, wildlife, and, in some areas in North Africa and Spain, for people. The associated flora and fauna are also valuable to people. It is no wonder that the trees have impressed so many travelers, painters, and poets. For example, Cervantes mentioned the cork oak tree at least seventeen times, and Don Quixote often shelters in the hollow of a large cork oak tree. In many places, the local name of the tree was applied to towns and rural sites of note. In parts of southwestern Europe and northwestern Africa, the cork oak became emblematic of entire microregions. The Maamora woodland of northern Morocco is the largest single stand of cork oak found anywhere, but the Iberian Peninsula harbors the most cork oak woodlands, and Portugal is the country with the highest cork production in the world, followed by Spain. Cork oak management persists in Tunisia and Algeria. But what are the prospects for the future? Our subject in this book is not only the tree but the forests, woodlands, and managed agroforestry systems of which cork oak is the major or one of the major components. Naturally, cork oak can occur in mixed forests, sharing the arboreal stratum with other evergreens and deciduous oaks, with pines and other conifers, and with a few other hardwoods. The cultural derivatives, which are open woodlands or parklands—sometimes called pseudosavannas or anthropogenic savannas—usually have just one or a few kinds of trees selectively maintained and carefully cultivated. These agroforestry systems are widely known by the generic Spanish term dehesas, but many other names exist. Some of them (e.g., the montados of Portugal and

01 Intro:IP Aronson 1/30/09 10:47 AM Page 3 Introduction 3 some of the azaghar in parts of Morocco) were specifically structured around cork oak. The trees spread over vast plains and hills and have been tended, pruned, selected, shaped, and sculpted by people for generations. Together these forests and woodlands form a certain type of landscape that has evolved over centuries as a special mix of nature and nurture that is the very heart and soul of the Mediterranean region. Indeed, the sheer beauty, mystery, and profound cultural significance of the cork oak and cork oak landscapes must not be overlooked at any point in our journey. For reasons related to past climate change and, especially, to the recolonization of territories after the quaternary glaciations, cork oak woodlands today are entirely limited to the western Mediterranean region, where they harbor remarkably high biodiversity, including many rare and endangered species. Like the olive tree (Olea europaea), they are emblematic of this region. Furthermore, all western Mediterranean landscapes involving the cork oak reflect a dynamic, co-evolutionary relationship between people and nature that is literally priceless but also extremely valuable as humanity seeks ways toward sustainable and desirable futures in a very crowded world. Yet something has gone awry. Cultural cork oak woodlands are in trouble, as are many other cultural and natural ecosystems and traditional rural cultures and land uses around the world. Cork oak is not in any danger of extinction, but many of the ancient Mediterranean cultural landscapes dominated by this species may disappear unless something happens soon. Over the millennia, cork oak woodlands have undergone numerous changes and fluctuations in land use type and intensity. The Middle Ages saw the regression of organized Roman agriculture; historians note the growing importance of agroforestry systems during this period and afterward, in both southern Europe and North Africa. In Iberia, for example, a driving force for this trend, especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was the fact that the wool-based economy of long-distance transhumance gradually gave way to swine herding (Grove and Rackham 2001). Moreover, although there was continuity and abundant cork oak in many places, such as the Alentejo (southern Portugal), as described by the German botanist and traveler H. F. Link at the end of the eighteenth century (Grove and Rackham 2001), and cork was an asset in Portuguese exports in medieval reports, most modern montados and dehesas are less than 150 years old. After the Peninsular War (1808–1814) and the ensuing political instability in Portugal and Spain, agriculture was so disorganized that it took until after the midnineteenth century to reconstitute the system (Picão 1903; Grove and Rackham 2001). But whereas the holm oak (Quercus ilex) dehesa systems may be one of the diehard survivors of the old European oak acorn swine-herding

01 Intro:IP Aronson 4 1/30/09 10:47 AM Page 4 in t r od u c t i o n tradition, cork oak expanded more in the context of the emerging cork industrialization, first in Catalonia and then in Portugal. At present, cork oak forests and open woodlands are undergoing an unprecedented rate of change. Many are aging and are unable to regenerate because of overgrazing. There is an ethical and philosophical question at issue. Modern societies change much faster than trees grow and develop. So does climate. Caring for trees is in part caring for an intergenerational legacy, and this is not very popular today. At the other extreme, a fast-growing population and clearly unsustainable increases in livestock numbers on the southern shores of the Mediterranean push North Africa to a new cycle of deforestation, leading to what can be called ecosystem and landscape collapse over large areas. Tragically, those areas include vast landscapes that were formerly diverse, productive, and beautiful, where people—in smaller numbers than live there today, of course—prospered in the shade of cork oak woodlands and other sustainable multipurpose, multiuser landscapes. Although cork oak is well adapted to fire, bark stripping increases its susceptibility to wildfires, which are increasing in the Mediterranean region. Periodic plowing to eliminate shrub encroachment, reduce fire hazard, and facilitate grazing or cropping became widespread. The heavier machinery used in the second half of the twentieth century, as opposed to the mule- or horsedrawn plow of the past, has had equally disastrous results in terms of tree regenera

5. Cork Bottle Stoppers and Other Cork Products 59 Américo M. S. Carvalho Mendes and José A. R. Graça Cork as an Industrial Material 59 Economic History of the Cork Sector 63 Conclusions 68 PART II. Scientific Bases for Restoration and Management 71 6. Coping with Drought 73 João S. Pereira, Cathy Kurz-Besson, and M. Manuela Chaves