The influence of land abandonment on forest disturbance regimes: a global review
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REVIEW PAPER
The influence of land abandonment on forest disturbance regimes: a global review Giulia Mantero . Donato Morresi . Raffaella Marzano David J. Mladenoff . Matteo Garbarino
. Renzo Motta
.
Received: 22 January 2020 / Accepted: 22 October 2020 / Published online: 1 November 2020 Ó The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Context Since the nineteenth century, rural areas have experienced progressive abandonment mostly due to socioeconomic changes, with direct and indirect effects on forest disturbance regimes occurring in these human-dominated landscapes. The role of land abandonment in modifying disturbance regimes has been highlighted for some types of disturbances, albeit being still somewhat overlooked compared to climate change. Objectives This literature review is aimed at highlighting the most relevant effects of land abandonment and land-use legacy on the regime of different types of forest disturbances, providing insight into land-use change/disturbances interactions.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01147-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. G. Mantero D. Morresi R. Marzano (&) R. Motta M. Garbarino Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Torino, Largo Braccini 2, 10095 Grugliasco, TO, Italy e-mail: [email protected] D. J. Mladenoff Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Russell Labs, Linden Drive, Madison 1630, USA
Methods We searched in the Scopus and Web of Science databases for relevant studies at the global scale dealing with eight major natural disturbances: avalanche, flooding, herbivory, insect outbreak, landslide, rockfall, wildfire and windthrow. We classified papers into five relevance classes, with the highest score (4) assigned to studies quantitatively measuring the interactions between abandonment dynamics and disturbance regimes. Results Most papers focused on wildfires in Mediterranean Europe in the twentieth century, where landscape homogenisation and fuel build-up contributed to worsening their frequency, size and severity. Dense forests developed following land abandonment instead exert inhibiting effects toward mass movements such as avalanches, rockfalls and landslides. Regarding the other investigated disturbances, we found only a few studies presenting site-specific and partly contrasting effects. Conclusions Land abandonment triggers ecological processes at the landscape scale, altering land cover patterns and vegetation communities, which in turn affect disturbance regimes. Implications for land and resource management mostly depend on the stage at which post-abandonment secondary succession has developed. Keywords Land-use change Disturbance ecology Wildfire Landslide Avalanche Windthrow Rockfall Insect outbreak Flooding Herbivory
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Introduction Land abandonment has recently been identified as the most important local-scale
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