40% of Spain is undergoing desertification due to human activity, whether from agriculture, livestock farming or tourism. The data leaves the Balearics on the brink of ecological collapse, with 85% of the region heading towards desertification. This is revealed in the first atlas on this phenomenon produced by several dozen scientists from universities and centres belonging to the CSIC with the aim of providing a useful document for the country’s policy makers.
According to data from 2020, the main areas affected by desertification are located in the south-east of the mainland, the La Mancha plateau, the south of Extremadura, the wine-growing areas of Castile and León and La Rioja, as well as the Canary and Balearic islands, the Ebro valley and part of the Guadalquivir.
The “Atlas of Desertification in Spain” (ATLAS) is available on the website and was presented on Thursday in Alicante by the project coordinators, Jaime Martínez Valderrama, a scientist at the CSIC’s Arid Zones Experimental Station, and Professor Jorge Olcina, head of the Climatology Laboratory at the University of Alicante. The main objective has been to produce maps of degradation and desertification in Spain, using a Random Forest algorithm with evidence of degradation in groundwater, wetlands, soil condition and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators.
The results obtained indicate that degradation covers 43.35% of Spanish territory and that desertification affects 60.94% of arid areas, a total of 206,203 of the country’s just over half a million square kilometres. In the case of the Valencian Community, the province of Alicante has 5,796 square kilometres, of which 4,641 is arid territory and 98.9% is subject to desertification, while in the case of Valencia the figures are 10,801 by 10,029 and 81.9%, and in Castellón they are 6,617, 5,011 and 57.3%.
Olcina explained that this project has the support of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (Miteco) within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan financed by the EU and fills a gap that existed. He is confident that the 66 maps designed on climate, water, soil, forest cover, biodiversity and Spanish society, all factors related to desertification, will be a useful tool for politicians to make decisions on ‘climate change, forest management and water management’.
Martínez Valderrama pointed out that four out of five Spaniards live in arid areas, many attracted by theoretically milder climatic conditions, and stressed the importance of water management, a resource which, he recalled, is the fundamental cause of some fifty international conflicts between countries on five continents. For the experts, the solution to the country’s water problems is neither simple nor uniform, but rather multidisciplinary and based on a combination of wastewater reuse, improved supply networks to prevent losses, desalination and water transfers.
One of the measures proposed to alleviate the overexploitation of aquifers is to reuse the 4,000 cubic hectometres of water consumed in urban centres, of which only 500, or 12%, are currently reused.
Based on these variables of climate, water, soil, forest cover, biodiversity and social factors, 99.8% of the territory of the Region of Murcia is an arid zone, followed by the Canary Islands (92.7), Castilla La Mancha (90.5), the Balearics (85.4) and the Valencian Community (84.4). At the opposite end of the scale are Cantabria, Galicia and Asturias, with zero square kilometres of arid land.