Montesinho Natural Park: General description and natural values

Abstract

The Montesinho Natural Park (PNM, Parque Natural de Montesinho) is a protected area located in the municipalities of Vinhais and Bragança, in the administrative NUT Alto Trás-os-Montes (PT118), the mountainous region of northeast Portugal. It was created in 1979 and consists of 748km 2 of natural wooded landscape and traditional mountain agricultural landscape, with highly variable gradients.PNM lies in the vast northeast Trás-os-Montes plateau, with average altitude around 750-900 m, which is part of the Iberian Meseta northern block (Medeiros, 1987; Ribeiro et al., 1987). However, in PNM elevation ranges more than 1,000 m, from the lowest point in the River Mente (436 m), its western border, to the top of Montesinho, at 1,487 m. The main altitudinal belts correspond also to the main landforms found in the area. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.