Browsing by Author "Zavala, Miguel"

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    Can Neo-Rural Initiatives Bolster Community Resilience in Depopulated Coupled Human and Natural System?: Insights From Stakeholder Perceptions in Central Spain
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2022) Sansilvestri, Roxane; Lucio, José Vicente de ; Seijo, Francisco; Zavala, Miguel; Horizon 2020 Framework Programme; European Commission; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
    Preindustrial era agro-sylvopastoral land uses have influenced structure,function and disturbance in Mediterranean type mountainous landscapes for millennia. In this study we analyze through semi-structured interviews,stakeholder perceptions of coupled human and natural system (CHANS) community resilience in one such landscape; the municipality of Puebla de la Sierra,Madrid. The municipality is part of the Biosphere Reserve of the Sierra del Rincon and the Natura 2000 network and as such is subject to various conservationist regulations emanating from multiple levels of governance. In the preindustrial past most municipal lands formed an oak “dehesa” or open forest CHANS that made biomass extraction through pollarding compatible with pastoralism and shifting agriculture. After a period of rapid land-use change in the early 20th century—marked by the state led plantation of coniferous forests,the final decades of the last century were characterized by rural abandonment and the collapse of traditional forms of land use as well as the gradual transformation of the municipality into an eco-touristic,exurban destination for Madrid residents. More recently,the municipality has experienced an influx of neo-rural settlers in the area wishing to connect traditional knowledge and management with modern agro-environmental practices. In our study,we identify two limiting factors to community resilience in Puebla de la Sierra; governance and financing. The current governance model is perceived by respondents to be contrary to their reality and needs,which translates into environmental,urban and health regulations that,in their views,penalizes agroecological and small-scale economic activities. In addition,respondents believe there is a dearth of material and financial resources to initiate these transformative local actions which further weakens community resilience. Stakeholders however also identified other factors that reinforce community resilience such as a collective willingness to revive key traditional ecosystem management practices such as pollarding,the networks of trust existing between the people participating in these new initiatives and the capacity for deliberating between different visions of future development pathways amongst local stakeholders. Copyright © 2022 Sansilvestri,de Lucio,Seijo and Zavala.
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    Resilience as a moving target: An evaluation of last century management strategies in a dry-edge maritime pine ecosystem
    (MDPI, 2021) Moreno Fernández, Daniel; Zavala, Miguel; Madrigal González, Jaime; Seijo, Francisco; Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades ; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
    Forests are intrinsically coupled to human dynamics,both temporally and spatially. This evolution is conditioned by global changes in climatic conditions (teleconnections) and distant socio-economical processes (telecoupling). The main goal of this study is to describe the teleconnections and telecoupling dynamics that have shaped structure and processes in a dry-edge—highly vulnerable to desertification—Mediterranean pine forest during the last century and to evaluate the contribution of historical management strategies to this coupled human and natural system’s (CHANS) overall resilience. For this study,we collected relevant human and natural system data from a dry edge Pinus pinaster Ait. located forest in Central Spain using a CHANS analytical framework operationalizing telecoupling and teleconnection. A key extractive economic activity in the studied forest was resin tapping,which was the main form of land use from the 1920s to the 1950s. Since the 1950s changes in the Spanish economy linked to the emergence of new resin-producing countries,such as China,led to a sharp decline in resin production. Despite additional human system transformations affecting forest governance (e.g.,the Spanish Civil War,the transition to democracy,European integration,etc.) and changes in biophysical conditions linked to climate change (e.g.,aridification,CO2 fertilization),the standing stocks of P. pinaster increased during the monitoring period due to sound technical and management planning bolstering overall resilience. These historical management decisions,we argue,successfully reconciled overall resilience goals (defined as the maintenance of forest function beyond and desertification avoidance) with three successive historical forest use challenges: Intensive firewood collection by local communities in fragile sandy soils,extensive pastoralism in the forest understory and tradeoffs between resin tapping damaged trees,timber production and tree cover as well as the emerging risks of wildfire and climate change. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI,Basel,Switzerland.