Wood-pastures are fragile ecosystems because they were formed by, and depend on specific, low-intensity multifunctional management. Although their ecological and cultural significance is high, wood-pastures are rapidly deteriorating all over Europe, mainly due to changing land use. We still lack a basic understanding of the ecological value of wood-pastures, and in which features they differ from other landscape elements. In this paper we investigated

Global change presents risks and opportunities for social-ecological systems worldwide. Key challenges for sustainability science are to identify plausible future changes in social-ecological systems, and find ways to reach socially and environmentally desirable conditions. In this context, regional-scale studies are important, but to date, many such studies have focused on a narrow set of issues or applied a narrow set of tools. Here, we present

Species inventories provide the basic information for biodiversity studies. Designing cost-effective species inventories is important in estimating the species richness or the number of additional species expected in a study area. Complete species inventories are difficult to achieve and a variety of estimation methods are available to counter the underestimation of species richness associated with incomplete sampling. A main criterion of selecting

During the past century, habitat fragmentation and increased human impacts have reduced populations of large carnivores throughout the world. Although bears have been extirpated from human-dominated landscape in most parts of Europe, they still occur in multi-use cultural landscapes in Southern Transylvania, Romania. Wood-pastures—grazed permanent grasslands with scattered or clumped trees and shrubs—are important elements of these cultural landscapes

Impending land-use change, including agricultural intensification, is increasingly threatening biodiversity in traditional rural landscapes. To ensure the persistence of species that are vulnerable to land-use change it is necessary to identify and protect high quality habitat before species start to decline. A potential problem is that many potentially vulnerable species are still widespread in traditional rural landscapes, making it difficult to

Many traditional cultural landscapes evolved as coupled social-ecological systems. It is important to understand how such systems navigate novel challenges posed by globalization. To address this issue, we bring together two components of a study carried out in a cultural landscape from Central Romania. The region was affected by major social and economic perturbations in the past century, affecting ethnic composition, community cohesion, land property

Wood-pastures are among the oldest land-use types in Europe and have high ecological and cultural importance. They are under rapid decline all over Europe because of changes in land use, decline of scattered trees, and lack of regeneration. In this study we characterized the structure, condition and threats of wood-pastures in a traditional rural region in Romania. Forty-two wood-pastures were surveyed, as well as 15 forest sites for comparison.

The major aim of this book is to offer a pan-European synthesis of the diverse nature of wood pastures, their social and ecological values, governing institutions, threats and conservation approaches. An innovative and comprehensive social-ecological framework is used to provide a common structure and organise study cases from Eastern and Western Europe. It is shown that woodlands and grasslands are important elements of European cultural identity

Land use change is a major threat to global biodiversity. Forest species face the dual threats of deforestation and intensification of forest management. In regions where forests are under threat, rural landscapes that retain structural components of mature forests potentially provide valuable additional habitat for some forest species. Here, we illustrate the habitat value of traditional wood pastures for a woodpecker assemblage of six species in

Background: Traditional rural landscapes of Eastern Europe are undergoing major changes due to agricultural intensification, land abandonment, change in agricultural practices and infrastructural development. Small man-made ponds are important yet vulnerable components of rural landscapes. Despite their important role for biodiversity, these ponds tend to be excluded from conservation strategies. Methodology/Findings: Our study was conducted in a