2 Experimental Areas of Prades and Montseny
Agnes Hereter and Juan Rafael Sanchez
2.1 The Montseny and Prades Mountains
Most of the research on holm oak forests described in this book was conducted in two mountain locations in Catalonia, northeast Spain: the Montseny mountains and the Prades mountains (Fig. 2.1). Both massifs belong to
the Catalan precoastal range, a chain of mid-sized mountains paralleling the
Mediterranean seaboard 'of Catalonia, 20-30 km from the coast. Both Montseny and Prades are extensively forested. The distance between them is
120 km.
The Montseny mountains are situated 40 km NNE from Barcelona. They
cover about 400 km 2 and the highest altitude is 1707 m a.s.l. The inner 75%
of the massif is a natural park and biosphere reserve. To the north and west
Montseny connects with other forested mountains. To the south lie the intensively occupied plains of the precoastal depression, with urban, industrial,
and agricultural areas, and major motorways. To the northwest lies a smaller
rural plain with intensive pig husbandry. Montseny is underlain mostly by
Ecological Studie ,Vol. 137
Ferran Rodll et aI. (eds) Ecology of Mediterranean
Evergreen Oak Fore t
I' > pringer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg 1999
Fig. 2.1. Location of experimental areas in
Spain