MED-AFFOREST · Afforestation management in Mediterranean mountain areas: Evaluating the environmental consequences

Human-induced afforestation has been one of the main policies for environmental management of forest landscapes in Mediterranean areas. Over the last decades, several studies have reviewed the impact of forests on soil properties, SOC dynamics and their geomorphological and hydrological response, although few of them have intensively studied the most relevant pedological and hydromorphological consequences of afforestation, particularly in the Mediterranean mountain areas. However, during the last century, extensive afforestation was conducted by national forest services all over the Mediterranean Region, causing a sudden change in land cover. Consequently, afforestation practices may have had significant effects on a variety of environmental aspects such as landscape structure, soil properties and water and sediment yield.To address this problem, an interdisciplinary approach is proposed for understanding the global effect of afforestation on landscape structure, soil properties and carbon sequestration, and hydrological and geomorphological dynamics. This objective includes a comparison with the consequences of naturally revegetated areas (shrubs and forests) using different experimental areas in Mediterranean mountain areas. The project deals with the urgent need to implement recommendations on afforestation management, proposing a new guideline for optimized afforestation scenarios in relation to water resources and carbon sequestration, including practices for local afforestation in relation to management and strategies for regional afforestation polices.