ABSTRACT
The continent of Europe, ranging from the Iberian Peninsula to the European part of Russia, is subject to considerable climatic and orographic variety. According to Meeus (1995), landform, soil, and climate, but also regional culture, habits, and history, are decisive factors in delineating European landscape types. Forests cover 1.02 billion ha, equivalent to 45% of Europe’s land area, and together with an additional area of 109 million ha of other wooded land, forests shape many European landscapes (Forest Europe et al. 2011). Enormous differences in the conditions for the growth of forest trees leads to a high diversity of forest landscapes, ranging from tundra, taiga, mountain forests, and semibocages to regional landscapes including montados and dehesas (Meeus 1995). Several typologies have been applied to split the continent into major regions with different forest characteristics; for example, Great Britain, the Nordic region, central Europe, and Iberia
CONTENTS
7.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 165 7.2 Characteristics of Forest Landscape Change ................................................................. 167 7.3 Production Forests, Single-Purpose Plantations, and Protected Areas ..................... 170
7.3.1 Production Forests ................................................................................................. 170 7.3.2 Plantations .............................................................................................................. 171 7.3.3 Protected Areas ...................................................................................................... 173
7.4 Reasons for Forest Landscape Change ........................................................................... 175 7.4.1 Social Change ......................................................................................................... 176 7.4.2 Technological Progress ......................................................................................... 177 7.4.3 Disturbance ............................................................................................................. 178
7.5 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 179 7.5.1 Major Changes to Forest Landscapes ................................................................. 179 7.5.2 Underlying Causes ................................................................................................ 180 7.5.3 Perspectives for the Future ................................................................................... 180
Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... 181 References ..................................................................................................................................... 181
(Edwards et al. 2012: 14); central-east, central-west, north, Russian Federation, southeast, and southwest (Forest Europe et al. 2011: 19); and Nordic, Atlantic, central, continental, and Mediterranean regions (Pröbstl 2007). For this reason, some of the ndings presented in this chapter are of greater signicance for specic regions, yet most have wide validity.
