Where do we come from? Cultural heritage in forests and forest management

Forests are of great importance, not least as an integral part of complex land-use systems shaping the European cultural landscape. Compared to the rates of change of open land, forests are relatively persistent landscape elements. Still, over a longer term, forests have been very dynamic with respect to spatial extent, internal structure, and species composition. Forest expansion after the last Ice Age was followed by shrinking of the forest area owing to the expansion of agriculture and settlements, i.e. the classic frontier situation, which lasted in Europe over a long period. However, there have also been periods of temporary forest expansion, e.g. caused by the Black Death (Rudel 2009; Lagerås 2007). Forest transition (Mather 1992), i.e. the more recent change from forest decline to forest expansion, has taken place at different times throughout Europe, e.g. in Switzerland (Loran et al. 2016) and Germany (Johann et al. 2004) already in the first half of the nineteenth century. The changes in forest area triggered successional patterns which were overprinted by human impacts, i.e. forest use and management (Kirby and Watkins 2015). Over time, societal demands changed and often diversified from various forest products to the full range of ecosystem services which today are in demand. The corresponding changes in forest structure and composition were reflected in changes in ecological characteristics, including biodiversity (Kirby and Watkins 1998). The diversity of these linkages between forest use and management and forest ecosystems has been addressed in a series of international conferences (e.g. Salbitano 1988; Agnoletti und Anderson 2000; Honnay et al. 2004). Lately, more weight has been given to aspects of cultural heritage (e.g. MCPFE 2006; Parrotta et al. 2006), and the concepts of ‘biocultural diversity’ (Agnoletti and Rotherham 2015) and ‘biological cultural heritage’ (BCH) (Eriksson 2018) have been promoted to foster an integrative perspective on cultural and natural heritage. In this chapter we illustrate, in a series of six case studies from different parts of Europe , how centuries of forest use and management have left imprints on forest ecosystems, and how acknowledging the legacy effects of the long-term inter-relationship between societies and their forests provides valuable background for sustainable forest management.