20% of the Spanish landscape is desertified – lagranepoca

Arable crops are the most likely to disappear by desertification in the country vegetation. / Jose Alfonso Gomez Calero

Desertification is one of the most visible consequences of climate change. In Spain, 20% of the territory has lost almost all its vegetation, according to a study of the CSIC. Researchers also find that one percent continues to erode and that the arable crops are the most likely to disappear landscape.

Some time ago experts have warned that Spain It is desertified, but now we can put numbers to this fact: 20% of the territory already been desertified, and 1% is currently degraded. This is the conclusion of a group of researchers from Center for Scientific Research (CSIC) published in Science of the Total Environment .

To develop this work, led by Jaime Valderrama Martínez, a researcher at the Experimental Station of Arid zones in Almeria, two tools have been used. On the one hand, a map of land condition has allowed them to know the status of land degradation and its future trend.

On the other hand, thanks to a set of simulation models for each landscape desertification detected in the program, estimated the risk of desertification five representative cases. From this analysis, scientists have established the hierarchy of the factors involved in this process aggravated by the effects of climate change.

“the factors that most affect are the climate, above socioeconomic” says the researcher

“the first implemented simulation models show that arable crops affected by erosion are the most likely to total desert landscape,” says Martinez. “The factors that affect climate are above socioeconomic”. This study has been supported by the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) and Institute of Economics, Geography and Demography, Center for Social and Human Sciences.

However, the researcher warns that the results can not be generalized because “it is necessary to study more cases to cover casuistry offered by the Spanish territory and allow reproduce the analysis in different places.”

the United Nations Convention to combat desertification entered into force on 26 December 1996. at present has been signed by 191 countries, including Spain.

All signatory countries have the obligation to develop and implement a National Action Program to Combat Desertification and Spain published his in 2008, through the centralization of various efforts promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment.