ABSTRACT
Wood-pastures are open wooded landscapes created and maintained through traditional grazing and woodland management. They are characterised by complex mosaics of open grasslands, semi-open woodland and dense forest patches, and by gradual boundaries between forest patches and surrounding pastures (Bergmeier et al., 2010; Garbarino et al., 2011, 2013). Variation in land use and disturbance regime as well as in their abiotic environment make wood-pasture systems very diverse. Due to their spread across all European vegetation zones and elevations, the species composition and vegetation structure of European wood-pastures are extremely variable. This diversity is manifest at regional scale, depending on bioclimatic and socioeconomic differences, at landscape scale, with complex mosaics of dense and semi-open forests, grasslands and scrub, and at local scale with micro-habitat peculiarities contributing to these unique and extensive ecosystems.
