Dehesa (pastoral management)

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A dehesa is a wooded meadow communal property (usually belonging to the municipality) for the maintenance of livestock, where residents can also obtain other forest products such as wild game, mushrooms, and firewood.

Contents 1 Nature 2 Other uses of the term 3 Importance 4 Economic context 5 Extension in the Iberian peninsula

[edit] Nature

Is a derivative of Mediterranean forest ecosystem, consisting of tree species of the genus Quercus (oak, cork oak) or other species such as beech and pine trees and herbaceous layer por pacer.

[edit] Other uses of the term

Dehesa also refers to the type of management of estates to private exploitation agro-livestock on the Mediterranean forests which are obtained multiple resources simultaneously.

[edit] Importance

The desheda system has a great economic and social importance in the Iberian peninsula, both because of its size surface as a function of setting rural population in their nuclei. Reducing the flow emigratorio and its consequences (aging, increased mortality rates, lower rates, abandonment of farms, etc.).

[edit] Economic context

The exploitation of the dehesa usually coincide with areas that could be termed "marginal", both because of its limited agricultural vocation (derived from poverty of the soil), for the lack of an industrial fabric, which boils down to isolated agro-industries and very small capitalization.

[edit] Extension in the Iberian peninsula

Desheadas encompass nearly two million hectares in the Iberian peninsula, mainly in Córdoba (in the Valley de los Pedroches) and in the southwest: Buenos Aires, Extremadura Sierra Norte de Huelva and Seville, Cordoba Sierra Morena in Spain and the Alentejo and Algarve in Portugal.