Wood Pastures: Drivers for Ecological Sustainability and Conservation Management

Dear Colleagues,

We are launching a Special Issue on wood pastures, focused on conservation management and potential drivers of biodiversity. Forest lands have been historically grazed; however, agricultural intensification and human abandonment of rural areas have set wood pastures aside. In recent times, extensive grazing has gained popularity mainly from an increase of social demand towards a more friendly and sustainable production of foodstuffs (e.g., organic farming)—this includes the practice of grazing in wood pastures, which is expected to grow.

Wood pastures hold exceptional ecological, social, and cultural values. An approach through conservation management is crucial, and should respond to how we proceed to sustain biological diversity. Assuming that the objective is to balance commodity production with maintenance of biological diversity and landscape sustainability, how do we visualize future landscapes? Recent literature situates the anthropogenic character of wood pastures requiring multifunctional land management as a major conservation challenge.

Numerous elements functioning at different spatial scales join to create and maintain biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems. Interactions among organisms maintain diversity, and disturbances may reduce the ability of one or a few species to dominate others. For example, plant diversity is linked in a great extent to the degree and frequency of disturbance and, in low heathlands, is maintained through the traditional uses of grazing, cutting, or burning. There is a need, however, for studies on the response of woodlands to different frequencies of disturbance. Although current literature about wood pastures provides a perspective of their ecological and social-cultural dimension and outlines management challenges, studies on the dynamic of processes under conservation management in these ecosystems are scarce.

We call for contributions on the importance of the co-evolutionary balance of plants/herbivores and their role in favoring biodiversity. Herbivores are influenced by plant traits, which include the nutritional quality of plant tisssues, secondary metabolites that either are toxic or reduce the digestibility of their nutritional resources; by predators; and by the abundance of food. Concentrations of nutrients and plant secondary metabolites (PSM) vary temporally and spatially, creating a multidimensional feeding environment. Research has relied largely on studying the isolated effects of nutrients or PSM on foraging behavior, so their interaction is poorly understood, and yet it can influence food selection and the dynamics of plant communities. Negative effects, or poor achievement of targets, can arise from inappropriate grazing, and deciding on optimum grazing regimes and grazing densities highly depend on these indicators.

Among influential management interventions driving the structure and dynamics of wood pastures, grazing is not unique. Studies on forestry practices to provide understanding of the ecological conditions facilitating sustainability of wood pastures would be also welcome. Gap-driven forest/agricultural landscapes maintain certain natural structure and (in addition) protect soils (i.e., the importance of ecotones). Maintaining aesthetics, preserving species, and protecting natural stabilizing mechanisms are all valid and not mutually exclusive arguments to address conservation management, and any other tactics to follow the common thread of maintaining (or restoring) natural diversity within the managed stand or landscape are welcome for this Special Issue.

Dr. Maria Pilar González-Hernández
Dr. Emilio  V. Carral  Vilariño
Dr. Teresa Rodríguez
Guest Editors

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• grazing ecology
• biodiversity
• grazing capacity
• key species
• stand development
• succession