Spain: Desertification, more abrupt than previously thought
A study published in Science warns that arid areas, such as Alicante, Murcia, Almería and the Canary Islands, will face increasingly dramatic changes due to climate change.
Arid areas make up 45% of the planet’s non-aquatic land and provide live hood, through activities such as agriculture or livestock farming, to nearly 2.5 billion people.
Since these areas are also particularly sensitive to climate change, experts think it is essential to know what kind of transformations they are facing. A new study conducted at the University of Alicante and published in the journal Science, has just shed light on the problem, although its conclusion is worrisome: once certain levels of aridity are exceeded, changes will not be proportional but drastic.
Despite what might be assumed, aridity intensification will not happen “little by little” as the temperature increases, but this type of land will rather respond to the changes in a disproportionate way, leading to a more abrupt desertification than previously thought.
The areas most exposed to this process are those already having a more arid climate. In the case of Spain, Alicante, Murcia and Almería –the southeast of the Peninsula- as well as islands such as Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, are the most threatened according to the researchers.
“The fundamental properties of arid ecosystems, such as the productivity of their vegetation or their soil fertility, respond in a non-lineal way to aridity increases, such as those expected due to climate change”, the head of the Arid Areas and Climate Change Laboratory -University of Alicante-, Dr. Fernando Maestre explains.
This scientific group has detected three critical levels in the ecosystem aridity, considered as “situations of no return”. By the year 2100, up to 18% of earth’s land will cross at least one of the thresholds detected. In Spain, this figure is higher, “the percentage is around of 75% of the Spanish surface”, the study reports.
In the case of the three southeast provinces mentioned plus two of the Canary Islands, which already reach high levels of aridity, the forecasts for change are more drastic as well. A process that, ultimately, could lead “to the degradation of natural ecosystems of these areas and their desertification”.
Source: El Mundo