Ecological Adaptation of Traditional Land Uses in the Spanish Pyrenees

A review of research completed in several disciplines, including ecology and anthropology, in the Spanish Pyrenees shows that the traditional society formed an open system, with wide cultural and economic interactions with the surrounding lowlands. The management of three main resources, forests, grain crops, and meadows, and their space allocation in the mountain landscape show that rural life depended upon a close interrelationship of cereal production and sheep breeding and was strongly controlled by local environmental features. The traditional structure has been disrupted by the impact of urban culture; its preservation must be considered as one of the main challenges in present-day management issues of temperate mountain regions.