Ana Lopez Moreno |
Madrid (EFE).- Spain is the second country in the European Union, only behind Sweden, with around 28 million hectares of forest area, which represents more than half of the entire national territory and, nevertheless, 75% is at risk of desertification, but what does this really mean?
The director of the Center for Research on Desertification attached to the Higher Center for Scientific Research (CSIC), Patricio García-Payos, explained to EFE that “the risk of desertification, an elusive term that is difficult to measure, comes to say that biological capacity is being lost in ecosystems, also at a productive level”, in reference to agriculture.
García-Payos adds that “the provinces that are most at risk are those that are most similar to North Africa, such as Almería, Murcia and Valencia or even the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha”, and points out that, in his opinion, the central forests of the Peninsula will be “less dense and with fewer species in a few years”.
However, he is optimistic, since he assures that “it is irreversible in a political cycle, but not in biological terms”, so that many of the problems of dryness in the mountains can still be alleviated.
According to data from the Ministry for Ecological Transition (Miteco), an increase in the forest landscape, as a result of the rural exodus in the 1950s, among other reasons, is fully compatible with the fact that this vegetation is increasingly drier.
The maps provided by the Ministry indicate that most of the Iberian Peninsula -except the north and wetlands-, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands -except for the northwest of the island of Mallorca- are at risk of desertification.
In the words of Javier Puertas, technical geographer of the professional forum of protected areas in Spain EUROPARC, with three decades of experience, there are “natural processes of aridity in the Mediterranean areas” and an example of this is the well-known Tabernas desert in the province of Almería.
Precisely to take care of the state of the forests, “LIFE Redbosques Climas” has been created, the latest EUROPARC project financed by the European Union that aims to promote the adaptability of forest areas to the new climate, as well as “mitigate climate change and conserve biodiversity”.
“What we propose in the project in specific territories are measures to increase the heterogeneity of species”, since this increases the resilience of the forest in the face of adverse situations, details Puertas, who observes that the least vulnerable areas are also those that share “trees of different ages and sizes” and hence the importance of making new plantations and thinning.
Along the same lines, the general secretary of PEFC Spain, Ana Belén Noriega, asserts the importance of “protective forests”, which occupy a good part of the entire forest area, in addition to “protecting our waters and our soils, causing the aquifers to be refilled”.
In order not to lose sight of the forests, Noriega declares that PEFC is working to certify urban and peri-urban forests: “We need people who live in cities to have a green corridor,” concludes the expert.