Cultural Determinants of Spatial Heterogeneity in Forest Landscapes

Forests constitute fundamental parts of our living environment and provide a wide range of important benefits and services to society that go far beyond forest products. From a landscape ecological perspective forests can be approached as part of an overall landscape whose pattern affects ecological processes across dimensions of common time and space. Forest landscapes often consist of complex assemblages of forest and non-forest elements (patches, corridors, and matrix) whose arrangement reflects, in part, the magnitude, intensity, and type of human intervention and disturbance. This chapter describes some of the cultural patterns inherent in selected forest landscapes with examples from southern Italy and southern Ontario, Canada. We outline how cultural determinants, such as land tenure systems, forest tenure regimes, silviculture traditions, management plans and practices can affect the way forest landscapes are spatially-arranged and the intrinsic heterogeneity associated with them. We provide illustrative examples of cultural determinants of spatial heterogeneity and conclude by discussing ways for enhancing functional and cultural attributes of forest and non-forest landscape elements within a landscape ecological perspective.