European beech is a temperate species with peripheral populations in the Mediterranean mountains. These Mediterranean beech forests have often been interpreted as climatic relicts. However, the use of this term does not always seem appropriate because their recent post-glacial expansion in the Iberian Peninsula makes it difficult to disentangle the effects of climate from those associated with land use. Moreover, the observed recovery of Mediterranean beech forests after land-use abandonment is not what might be expected of a climatic relict. Our objective is to clarify this issue by studying one of these Mediterranean “relict” populations located at the south-western margin of this species (Iberian Central Range), discriminating between subpopulations with dissimilar land-use legacies. Differences between the climatic range of this population and the rest of the European beech forests were explored. Historic and recent shifts in the species distribution area were studied by reviewing paleorecords from the literature and contrasting historical and recent cartography. Field data on population structure and demography were also examined. The climatic analyses do not point to climatic marginality of the peripheral population studied. Furthermore, the results revealed no evidence of reduction in area or confinement over recent decades. Contrary to what is expected for climatic relict species under current climate, beech is expanding in the studied mountain following the abandonment of traditional land uses, particularly since the middle of the twentieth century CE. Our results do not support the concept of a climatic relict but rather, they point to the importance of anthropogenic legacies to explain the distribution area, population dynamics and current conservation status of Mediterranean beech forests.

欧洲山毛榉是一种温带物种，在地中海山区具有外围种群。这些地中海山毛榉森林经常被解释为气候遗迹。但是，使用该术语似乎并不总是恰当的，因为它们最近在伊比利亚半岛发生冰川后扩张，因此很难将气候影响与土地使用相关的影响区分开来。此外，在放弃土地用途后观察到的地中海山毛榉森林的恢复并不是气候遗迹的预期。我们的目标是通过研究位于该物种西南边缘（伊比利亚中部山脉）的这些地中海“遗留”种群之一来区分这个问题，以区分具有不同土地利用传统的亚种群。探索了该种群与其他欧洲山毛榉森林的气候范围之间的差异。通过回顾文献中的古记录并对比历史和最近的制图技术，研究了物种分布地区的历史和最近的变化。还检查了有关人口结构和人口统计学的实地数据。气候分析并未指出所研究的外围人口的气候边缘性。此外，结果显示在最近几十年中没有减少面积或限制活动的证据。与当前气候下的气候遗留物种所期望的相反，山毛榉在放弃传统土地用途之后，尤其是自二十世纪中叶以来在正在研究的山区中扩展。