With spring almost upon us, CREAF’s experts are reporting that this year could be a chance for Catalonia’s forests to recover from accumulated past droughts and the devastating effects of the pine processionary. There will be no let-up for the territory’s undergrowth, however, with the box tree moth’s continuing expansion leaving just 20% of box plants with new growth.
CREAF takes part in an international study aboy Arctic tundra leads by iDiV where they discover that tundra plants are more diverse in how they cope with cold climates than previously thought. In a warming world, these tundra plants will benefit from having a wide range of ways to adapt to the changing climate.
The need to fit the pieces of a currently fragmented landscape has led the European Union and the various territorial administrations to promote green infrastructure. This type of planning could secure ecosystem services and increase the connectivity of the Natura 2000 network, while improving the coverage of species of conservation interest in the EU beyond the current protected areas.
The European Union promotes Cos4Cloud, an ambitious project that will create cutting-edge technology services to improve citizen science platforms. Among other services it will include: integrating observations from different citizen science platforms into a portal, artificial intelligence tools that help citizens recognize species when they send an observation and standardize data from different platforms
A new Horizon 2020 project, where CREAF takes part actively, will provide improved tools to European policymakers for predicting the result of future EU agriculture policies, taking account of farmers’ needs and effectively monitor policy impacts on natural, social and cultural assets in rural areas. It is BESTMAP!
Around 30,000 trees and shrubs were planted between 2016 and 2019 in the Mediterranean basin and the Canary Islands, with a survival rate achieved that varied between 20 and 80%, depending on the species involved. The economic analysis shows that the Cocoon system can be up to four times more profitable than the normal reforestation method.
