Biocultural diversity and landscape patterns in three historical rural areas of Morocco, Cuba and Italy

As indicated by the UNESCO-sCBD Florence Declaration on biocultural diversity the current state of biological and cultural diversity results from the combination of historical and on-going processes. The Declaration indicates the landscape level, particularly the rural landscape, as an appropriate dimension for understanding and applying this concept. The spatial component of biological diversity is of crucial importance for biodiversity, but is also one of the most interesting scientific perspective to understand biocultural diversity and the relationships with human influence. Historical landscapes still applying traditional agricultural practices are very good examples of how man has been able to adapt to difficult and often extreme, environmental conditions, preserving biodiversity. Species and their habitats have adapted to landscapes, changing their features, therefore a biocultural approach is probably best suited to understand and manage most of the biodiversity existing in landscape characterized by a long history of human influence. Some important international programs, such as UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) for Cultural Landscapes and FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) are protecting rural landscapes. However, there is the need to introduce the biocultural diversity associated to the landscape mosaic in their conservation strategies. In order to study and compare biocultural diversity at landscape level, three case studies were selected in three different continents: Northern Africa (Morocco), Caribbean (Cuba) and Southern Europe (Italy). The landscape structure has been studied also to understand possible common features among areas located in very different social and environmental conditions, but all of them resulting from centuries of human influence. Despite these differences, the three areas have in common a high complexity and fragmentation of the mosaic that the study intended to highlight as an important aspect of biocultural diversity. In a comparative perspective, the three areas all display a prevalence of farmland over woodland and a relatively small average area of farmed plots: 0.48 ha in Viñales, 0.29 ha in the Itria valley, and 0.09 ha in Telouet, with an average patch size of 0.42 ha and an average agricultural patch size of 0.28 ha. The Moroccan site has by far the finest-grained landscape mesh, due to the characteristics of its irrigated fields and historical farming practices. According to this study, complex landscape mosaics represent a common feature of many traditional landscapes around the world, where socioeconomic needs rather than the environmental features, seem to be the driving factors.