Spatial Interactions in Communal Forest Plantations
Julia Touza Montero (2001)

Introduction

This project investigates the Management of Forest lands held by Communal private forest owners (CPFO).The empirical research focuses on Galicia (a Spanish region) where private individuals own 97% of the forest area. There are two types of ownership:

single ownership: 64% of forest land; mean size of the plots: 1.4 hectares; 672,618 owners.

communal ownership: 33% of forest land; mean size of the plots: 233 hectares; 2,800 communities.

The main problem for management of Galician forests is that the land use is very fragmented. Community lands can be characterised as a multiple plantation forests (i.e. a set of forest patches). These communal forestlands basically, because of their size, offer an opportunity for managing forest resources at landscape scale, taking into consideration the spatial arrangement of the forest patches.

Adopting this approach is is relevant for ecological reasons:

Management at ecosystem scale is vital for the protection of biodiversity. Management and ecological interactions between spatially dispersed forest areas influence the function of forest ecosystems.

AND for economic reasons:

It is economically more desirable to cut timber quantities in adjacent areas, because it is less costly for unit of timber and less infrastructure is needed.