1Forest Landscape Restoration in a Mediterranean Context

The Mediterranean basin is an area that is characterized by its high diversity in several inter-related aspects: biological, cultural, economic, social and historical. It is a well defined bio-geographical region showing a high biodiversity content, even in cases, where nature is restricted to small residual fragments. High variability has been recorded at all levels of biodiversity in the region. The wealth of plant species found in Mediterranean forests is one of the main features, that distinguishes them from the forests of central and Northern Europe; Mediterranean forests have twice as many woody species as European forests. The diversity of animal species (i.e. avifauna) is very high as well, especially when it is expressed by the ratio between species richness and area. Furthermore, Mediterranean populations of species with a Pan-European distribution, such as fir, beech, pine and spruce, are often characterized as the most variable in terms of genetic diversity. Besides species and genes, diversity is the main characteristic of the Mediterranean landscape as well. The evolution of species and ecosystems has not been uniform, but it followed rather a mosaic-like pattern. During the geological and climatic histor