Unraveling Misunderstandings about Desertification: The Paradoxical Case of the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin in Southeast Spain
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Título: | Unraveling Misunderstandings about Desertification: The Paradoxical Case of the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin in Southeast Spain |
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Autor/es: | Martínez-Valderrama, Jaime | Guirado, Emilio | Maestre, Fernando T. |
Centro, Departamento o Servicio: | Universidad de Alicante. Departamento de Ecología | Universidad de Alicante. Instituto Multidisciplinar para el Estudio del Medio "Ramón Margalef" |
Palabras clave: | Desertification | Groundwater | Irrigation | Olive groves | Southern Europe |
Área/s de conocimiento: | Ecología |
Fecha de publicación: | 11-ago-2020 |
Editor: | MDPI |
Cita bibliográfica: | Martínez-Valderrama J, Guirado E, Maestre FT. Unraveling Misunderstandings about Desertification: The Paradoxical Case of the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin in Southeast Spain. Land. 2020; 9(8):269. https://doi.org/10.3390/land9080269 |
Resumen: | From its origins, the concept of desertification has been controversial. The prevailing confusion between two desertification visions, one that considers it as the expansion of deserts and another that emphasizes its anthropogenic component, has been transferred to society. Here we illustrate misunderstandings about desertification using a very illustrative case from the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin (Almeria, Spain), where striking badlands that are often used as an image of desertification coexist with an intensive olive agriculture that is irreversibly deteriorating the only oasis in continental Europe (Los Molinos spring). The olive tree is a traditional Mediterranean dryland crop and until the 1950s only about 200 ha were irrigated in this area. However, the profitability of the crop has caused irrigation to expand to 4400 ha in the last two decades. The process of intensification has been reinforced giving way to super-intensive irrigation, which involves going from 210 to 1550 trees/ha, which in a few years already occupies more than 1500 ha. The effects on the water balance of the aquifer feeding these crops have been severe, and the flow of the Los Molinos spring has gone from more than 40 L/s for the period 1970–2000 to the current 7.28 L/s. Unraveling the mechanisms of land degradation and its main drivers are the first step to propose management actions to achieve a more sustainable use of resources and to combat desertification. |
Patrocinador/es: | This research was funded by the European Research Council grant agreement nº 647038 (BIODESERT). FTM acknowledges support from Generalitat Valenciana (CIDEGENT/2018/041). |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10045/108548 |
ISSN: | 2073-445X |
DOI: | 10.3390/land9080269 |
Idioma: | eng |
Tipo: | info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
Derechos: | © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Revisión científica: | si |
Versión del editor: | https://doi.org/10.3390/land9080269 |
Aparece en las colecciones: | Investigaciones financiadas por la UE Personal Investigador sin Adscripción a Grupo INV - DRYLAB - Artículos de Revistas |
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