Drought, blight threaten to press up olive oil price

Terra Daily via AFP: Shoppers risk paying more for their olive oil this year as a drought in Spain and a blight in Italy wither trees in the two top producers, driving up prices. Months of dry weather have struck Andalusia in the south of Spain, the world's biggest producer of the "yellow gold".

In the second-biggest grower Italy, the bacteria xylella fastidiosa has shrivelled olive branches in the southern Puglia region. "Prices will rise by 30 to 40 percent because there will be fewer olives and therefore less oil produced," said one olive farmer in Puglia, Raffaele Piano.

"But quality will not be affected," he told AFP. "There is no cure. The only solution is to burn the infected trees to stop the bacteria spreading quickly."

Producers in parched Spain say they expect their prices to rise too over the coming months as the October harvest approaches, but hesitate to forecast by how much....

An amphora depicting olive gatherers, from the British Museum, public domain

Hundreds of firefighters tackle thousands of acres of wildfires destroying countryside across Spain

Matthew Bennett in the Spain Report: Spain has deployed twenty-nine firefighting aircraft and several Forest Fire Reinforcement Brigades to try to extinguish active wildfires across northern Spanish regions, according to a statement published by Spain’s Agriculture, Food & Environment Ministry. The latest estimates put the total damaged surface area at around 8,000 acres.

In the province of Guadalajara (Castilla La Mancha, north-east of Madrid), nine firefighting aircraft have been deployed to tackle blazes in the villages of Cogulludo, Aleas and Bustares. In the northern region of Navarra, six firefighting aircraft have been deployed from Navarra, La Rioja and Madrid to tackle a blaze near the small village of Ujué.

Spanish news agency Europa Press reports a further fourte
en firefighting aircraft and several dozen firefighters have been working since lunchtime Sunday to extinguish a forest fire in La Vall d’Uixò, in the eastern coastal province of Castellón (Valencia). Up to 100 people have been evacuated from their houses.

Spain’s Military Emergencies Unit (UME) sent troops to villages around Guadalajara, following a request from the regional government on Friday, after five wildfires took hold in the province at the end of the week. Two were especially active, “out of control” with a “very negative outlook”, and one reached the edges of the Sierra Norte national park....

Image from a 2009 fire in Spain, shot by Elvira S. Uzábal - elbeewa, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Spanish study matches forest fires to the last two years high temperatures

PhysOrg: A study led by some University of Barcelona researchers analyses the impact of interannual and seasonal climate variability on the fires occurred in Catalonia last summer. The study concludes that summer fires, related to summer climate conditions, are correlated with antecedent climate conditions, especially winter and spring ones with a lag time of two years. The results suggest that precipitation and temperature conditions regulate fuel flammability and fuel structure.

According to the correlations observed, the study provides a model to produce long-term predictions. The study, published in the journal Climatic Change, comes out of the doctoral thesis of the researcher Marco Turco, directed by the UB researcher Maria del Carme Llasat, co-author of the article.

From 1983 to 2007, period analysed in the study, more than 16000 fires events were recorded and the total burned area was more than 240000 hectares, around 7.5 % of Catalonia. The work develops a statistical analysis of these fires and shows that, from a climate point of view, according to Maria del Carme Llasat, "is possible to develop a model that gives us an estimation of the number of fires and the extension of the burned area related to monthly average temperature and rainfall. We developed a simple regression model which includes the influence of spring-summer climate conditions of the studied year, but specially other variables which are determinant, although they do not seem to."

The established correlations allow us to prove that, for example, low minimum temperatures in winter and summer contribute to an increase in the number of fires. However, the extension of the burned area highly depends on the winter months' rainfall, and in both cases on the winter-spring temperatures with a time lag of two years....

Sun obscured by the smoke of a 2010 wildfire near Guitiande, in Brión, Galicia, Spain. Shot by Tapetum, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Flash floods kill 10 in Spain as torrential rain causes havoc

Lin Jenkins in the Guardian (UK): At least 10 people, three of them children, died after torrential rain triggered flash floods across a swath of southern Spain and another 35 were injured when a tornado swept through a fairground, knocking down a ferris wheel.

The strength of the torrents washed away cars, turned roads to rivers, damaged houses, brought down a motorway bridge and forced thousands to abandon their homes. Many people had to be rescued by the emergency services using inflatable rafts to ferry them to safety.

...The worst hit areas were in the provinces of Málaga and Almería, and the Murcia region. Further north, a tornado hit the town of Gandia, causing severe damage to the fairground in the town square, knocking down the ferris wheel and cutting the electricity supply. Of those injured, 15 were said to be in a serious condition and were treated at the scene before being taken to hospital. The fair had been closed to the public, and local reports said the injured were all fairground workers.

Spain's weather agency said that 9.6 inches of rain fell on Friday morning alone and torrential rainfall and violent thunderstorms were set to continue over the weekend, causing more flooding....

Wildfires rage in Canary islands

Disaster News Network: Nearly 5,000 people in Spain's Canary Islands have been evacuated as wildfires race through tinder-dry forests and fields, regional officials said.

The worst affected islands are Tenerife and La Gomera, Britain's Sky News television network reported.

More than 7,400 acres of land, including part of a World Heritage nature reserve, on La Gomera have been scorched since Friday, officials said.

"There is no positive change for the moment," an emergency official told reporters.

Firefighters on the ground were being helped by water-dropping aircraft, the report said.

The islands, located off the coast of Morocco, have experienced the driest conditions in some 70 years, the broadcaster said....

Las Palmas de Anaga on Tenerife, shot by Mataparda, public domain

The importance of seeking new pine varieties resistant to climate change

EurekAlert: The radiata pine is the tree species par excellence in the Basque Country's forests. Like other types of pine, the lack of water is one of the factors having the greatest effect on its survival and productivity. Until now, the Basque Country's high, steady rainfall has encouraged the cultivation and good productivity of this species. This situation could change over the coming years if, in line with the predictions of climate change, average temperatures rise and droughts become more frequent and intense. So, new varieties of the radiata pine that are more resistant to the effects of climate change will have to be introduced. It is significant that the Basque Country's radiata pine should have been one of the ecotypes that has suffered most from the lack of water.

Introducing varieties of radiata pine that withstand drought better would not have any negative repercussions on the biodiversity existing in the Basque Country, as it would simply be a case of substituting one variety for another. The research has a significant repercussion for the timber industry in the Basque Country, as the radiata pine is one of its main crops due to the high productivity and quality of its timber. The sector can take into consideration the most suitable varieties within its programmes for improvement.

In order to simulate the anticipated scenario of an increased water shortage and its impact on the survival of forestland, Nuria De Diego, a PhD holder thanks to a grant provided by the Department for the Environment, Spatial Planning, Agriculture and Fisheries of the Government of the Basque Autonomous Community, together with specialists from Neiker-Tecnalia and the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, have evaluated the response to situations of water stress of various ecotypes or varieties of radiata pine from different climate and geographical zones worldwide. The study carried out has been defended under the title: Respuesta a la sequía de Pinus radiata D. Don y su implicación en los procesos de tolerancia (Response to drought of Pinus radiata D. Don and its implications for tolerance processes). Part of the research done by De Diego is due to be published shortly in one of the most important journals existing on forestry: Tree Physiology.

....Within the varieties studied, the research detected that the Basque Country's radiata pine ecotype was among the ones that displayed the least drought tolerance and hardening capacity. This low capacity for adaptation leads one to think that an upsurge in the atmospheric conditions brought about by climate change will cause a large proportion of the Basque Country's pinewood stocks to sustain considerable damage....

A Monterey pine tree forest, location unknown. Shot by fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 only as published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.

Spain wilts in driest winter for 70 years

Terra Daily via AFP: February is barely past but already Spanish farmers are on drought alert as reservoirs shrink, crops wilt and brush fires crackle after the country's driest winter in 70 years. Spain is used to fires in the summer, but this year they have come early, ravaging woodland, while the general dryness stunts crops and leaves farm animals without grass for grazing.

Brush fires have already swept across 400 hectares in the wooded northwestern region of Galicia. Near the Galician village of Brocos, the Portodemouros reservoir has visibly shrunk and egg-shell cracks have appeared in the mud.

"We have a very hard drought, spectacularly intense in some territories," said agriculture minister Miguel Aras Canete. "The water reserves are not at alarming levels, but we are beginning to have a lot of forest fires."

Spaniards emerged from their usual choking summer last year gasping for rain, but over the past three winter months Spain has had average precipitation of just 55 litres per square metre, far below the average of 200 litres....

Dam, Gabriel y Galán in Guijo Granadilla (Caceres) Spain, shot by Feitud, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Extreme droughts in Spain could increase 15% by 2050

Environmental Protection Online: A team at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena has designed a new method for calculating drought trends. Initial results suggest that by the year 2050 there could be a 15 percent increase compared to the droughts seen in 1990 in the Segura river basin.

At the beginning of 2011, water levels in Spain's reservoirs reached an average of 77.83% of total capacity. However, the lack of rain last year has now reduced the average to 62.01 percent. The droughts that Spain experiences year on year are one of the main concerns of agricultural workers who use up to 80 percent of a reservoir's water for their crops.

A new study at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) has combined recorded data with the results from state-of-the-art regional climate change models to calculate the maximum length of droughts in detail. The results, which have been applied to the Segura river basin, show how "drought periods since the 1980's onwards have notably intensified," according to Sandra García Galiano, one of the authors of the study.

For García Galiano and her team from the UPCT's Water Resources R&D&i group, "semiarid basins, like that of the Segura river, are vulnerable to changes in rainfall. This creates uncertainty for agriculture." The purpose of the study is to "deepen knowledge of plausible draught trends so that this information can then be used to strike a better balance between adaptation and mitigation measures."...

The Bardenas desert, in Navarre. Spain. Shot by Flipao, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Spanish ski resorts struggle with lack of snow

Terra Daily via AFP: Spanish ski resorts are watching business melt away as a lack of snow and unusually warm weather force them to close or operate just some of their pistes. "We have not been able to open at all this year. We are talking about the worst thing that could happen," said Agustin Ramirez, the manager of the Valdesqui resort near Madrid as he stood in front of a closed ticket booth.

The 40-year-old resort located some 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the Spanish capital has 27 pistes of different levels of difficulty that normally draw around 1,500 customers on a weekday -- and up to 3,500 on weekends. But on a recent visit its parking lot with its sweeping views of the peaks of the surrounding Madrid mountains was empty except for three staff vehicles and the pistes were covered in brown grass.

Of Spain's 32 ski resorts, eight including Valdesqui were closed for skiing on Friday due to the lack of snow and mild temperatures, according to the website of the Spanish Tourist Association of Ski and Mountain Resorts. None of the 24 resorts that were operating had all of their trails open -- and those that did operate pistes relied on expensive man-made snow to draw skiers....

Not quite fair, but this is part of the ski resort of Pradollano in Sierra Nevada, in August 2010, Andalusia, Spain. Shot by Jebulon, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Protecting the Catalan coastline's red coral

Science Daily: Poaching accounts for the loss of up to 60% red coral biomass in the Medes Islands Marine Reserve, according to an article published in the journal Conservation Biology, signed by the first author Cristina Linares, a biologist from the University of Barcelona's Department of Ecology. The article reports the first study of poaching and its effects in the marine reserve and raises the alarm about the impact of recreational diving on the coral population of the Medes Islands.

The article is also signed by the experts Bernat Hereu and Mikel Zabala (Department of Ecology, UB), Joaquim Garrabou (Institute of Marine Sciences, CSIC), David Díaz (Spanish Institute of Oceanography), Christian Marschal (Center of Oceanology of Marseille) and Enric Sala (Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes, CSIC).

The "reserve" effect in the Medes area has improved the conservation of many marine species in their natural habitats. In the case of red coral (Corallium rubrum), an endemic Mediterranean species that is harvested both legally and illegally along the Catalan coastline, the study finds that poaching is the principal threat to colonies of this prized marine invertebrate.

... Many of the large coral colonies found along the Catalan coast have disappeared as the result of human activities. The genus Corallium, which is protected by the Barcelona Agreement, has not yet been included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Applying the results of this research and increasing efforts in the area of management and conservation will be the main challenges in maintaining the beauty of Catalonia's coastal coral populations. This is the view of the UB experts involved in the study, members of the former Marine Zoobenthos Ecology Group and current MedRecover research group, which studies the direct and potential combined effects of global change on the conservation of marine biodiversity....

View of the Mediterranean shore of the Cadiz province from the top of the Rock of Gibraltar. Catalan Bay and the Rock in the foreground. Shot by MatHampson, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Conservation of coastal dunes in Spain is threatened by poorly designed infrastructure

Science Daily: Although the dune ecosystem is unusual, fragile and is protected by the "habitats" directive of the network Natura 2000, its conservation is very vulnerable to the proliferation of car parks, nearby buildings and inadequate boardwalks installed for protection or beach access. Researchers at the University of Seville (UoS) have published a study in the Journal of Coastal Research of human impact on the natural dunes at two sites in the Gulf of Cádiz, specifically in the protected areas of La Flecha Litoral in El Rompido and Enebrales in Punta Umbria, both in Huelva province. The experts show that both dune systems are exposed to human pressure.

"This work tried to identify which factors influence the vulnerability of the dunes. On the one hand, these ecosystems are exposed to natural perturbations like storms, but also, we observe that human impact may have negative consequences even in zones which are difficult to access," explains Sara Muñoz Vallés, lead author of the study and researcher at the UoS.

…According to their assessment, some of the most affected areas, both in La Flecha and in Enebrales, owe this instability to human impact. "Specifically, car parks constructed within the dune area, poorly designed accesses and the laxity of control of tourists, as well as boardwalks installed at ground level which permit access to the beach over the first (seaward) line of dunes, but which interfere with their natural dynamics, have contributed to this vulnerability," indicates the researcher.

This fact explains that zones of La Flecha where there are no boardwalks and tourists have free access to the dune system show the same degree of fragility and of poor conservation as zones in Enebrales, where there are six boardwalks intended to protect the dunes from trampling.

…"Aside from their beauty and biodiversity, the dynamics of dune formation are unusual and highly plastic, and they play a very important role in the protection of the interior. Studies of the passage of Hurricane Katrina have explained how well-conserved mangrove swamps mitigated the destruction and erosion caused by Katrina, while those in a poor state of conservation did not have that capacity. The case of dunes is similar as far as pounding by the sea is concerned," concludes the expert.

One of the beaches studied, El Rompido, at low tide. Shot by Marc Ryckaert (MJJR), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Research on satellite imagery aims to advance sustainable agriculture

Science Daily: … Scientists in Spain are working on new technologies to classify and monitor irrigated crops with a goal of promoting sustainable agricultural practices. "To encourage sustainable use of water resources, it is essential to develop advanced and accurate tools to classify and monitor irrigated crops and to estimate the surface occupied by each irrigated crop, each of which usually has different water requirements," said Francisca López-Granados, lead author of a study published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science.

López-Granados and a team of researchers reported on field studies they designed to evaluate the potential of multispectral reflectance and seven vegetation indices in the visible and near-infrared spectral range for discriminating and classifying bare soil and several horticultural irrigated crops. According to the scientists, the research is the first step of a broader project with the overall goal of using satellite imagery with high spatial and multispectral resolutions for mapping irrigated crops.

The team collected on-ground reflectance data of bare soil and annual herbaceous crops (garlic, onion, sunflower, bean, maize, potato, winter wheat, melon, watermelon and cotton), perennial herbaceous crops (alfalfa and asparagus), deciduous trees (plum), and non-deciduous trees (citrus and olive) using a handheld field spectroradiometer in spring, early summer, and late summer. They applied three classification methods to discriminate differences in reflectance between the crops and bare soil: stepwise discriminant analysis and two artificial neural networks (multilayer perceptron and radial basis function).

"The results of the three classification methods showed that the highest percentage of accuracy was achieved with multilayer perceptron (MLP), followed by stepwise discriminant analysis and radial basis function (RBF)," said López-Granados. The classification matrix from the MLP model using cross-validation showed that most crops discriminated in spring and late summer were 100% classifiable; the best overall classification was obtained in late summer, when fewer crop species were available….

NASA satellite image of Spain

Higher temperature, less precipitation predicted in Spain

Xinhua: Spain woke up with alerts on Wednesday that temperatures would be over 40 Celsius degree in 12 of the country's provinces. In addition, forecasters said, high temperatures are going to be increasingly common in the future.

The Spanish State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) predicted in a report that maximum temperatures over the period 2071-2100 will rise between 3 and 6 degrees compared with those between 1961-1991. The findings also show that minimum temperatures will increase by between 2 and 5 degrees.

Spain can also expect a decrease in rainfall. The first half of this century will not see any significant changes, but there will be less rain in Spain between 2050 and 2100, with a decrease of between 15 to 30 percent in the last decade of the century.

The tendency for temperatures to rise in Spain began in the 1980s. Secretary of State of Climate Change Teresa Ribera warned that the country has to act now to prepare for the climate change. "We have to start from global climactic models adapted for the individual characteristics of our country," she said….

El Puente del Diablo on the Spanish coast north of Santander (in Cantabria), shot by Jumacuca

Mathematical systems help in decision-making following natural disasters

Science Daily: A team of mathematicians from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) has developed a computer application that estimates the magnitude of natural disasters and helps non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the decision making process. The researchers have also presented an on-site humanitarian aid distribution model. Both could have been applied in the case of the recent Haiti earthquake.

"The Sistema Experto para el Diagnóstico en Desastres (SEDD) (Expert System for Disaster Diagnosis) is a natural-disaster diagnosis and prediction computer tool to help NGOs in strategic decision making," Begoña Vitoriano, co-author of a study published this month in the Knowledge-Based Systems Journal, and professor of the Statistics and Operative Research Department of the UCM Mathematics Faculty, explains.

The program starts by taking information about the type of disaster (earthquake, flood, hurricane, tsunami, fire, etc.), quantifiable units (Richter scale for earthquakes, wind speed for hurricanes, etc.) and a vulnerability measurement of the area. To obtain a vulnerability measurement, which is the most difficult to do, the scientists use the Human Development Index provided by the UN per country, and they modify it according to the situation of the affected region.

With these data, the computer application estimates the magnitude of the consequences of the catastrophe "in terms of fatalities, injuries, homeless people, others affected and cost," which is very useful information for NGOs. These variables have been chosen from the Disaster Epidemiology Research Centre database of Lovaina University (Belgium), which is a WHO collaborating centre.

…Juan Tinguaro Rodríguez, also a member of the UCM team, points out that "The decision aid system that we propose could have been applied perfectly following the recent Haiti earthquake, as it is centred around the assessment of the consequences of disasters such as this, where primary information is scarce, unreliable or, in general, of low quality."

…Another application developed by these mathematicians and that has just been published in the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, is a humanitarian aid distribution systems (HADS). The tool is based on the use of a logistics map of the territory, with nodes (localities) and connections (streets and roads). The "graph" includes aid demand in some nodes (affected populations), supply in others (airports, ports or stores), availability and characteristics of vehicles (type, capacity, speed, cost), as well as data on connections (distances, condition of roads, risk of attack)….

Earthquake damage in Haiti, shot by UN Photo/Logan Abassi , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Heavy rains bring Spanish wetlands back to life

Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: An environmentally valuable expanse of Spanish wetlands that dried up through mismanagement of water resources and drought is once again awash with water due to heavy rainfall, an official said Tuesday. Over 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of the wetlands of the Tablas de Daimiel National Park are flooded, the highest level since 1997, up from just 67 hectares on January 7, a park spokesman said.

The heavy rains also put out an underground peat fire which had raged at the wetlands, recognised by UNESCO as environmentally valuable because of their importance to both resident and migrating birds The wetland, located some 185 kilometers (115 miles) south of Madrid, received the heaviest rains since records began in 1941.

"The park was dead, and all you could see were the bones of dead fish," daily newspaper El Pais quoted the last fisherman to make a living at the park, 81-year-old Julio Escuderos, as saying on Sunday.

At the start of the year the government began diverting water from the Tagus River some 150 kilometres away to the wetlands through an underground pipe but the heavy rains meant far less water needed to be tranfered than had been expected.

"The park has gone through a critical situation due to a five-year drought. Thanks to the rains and an emergency transfer of water, the park has come through," Spain's secretary of state for water, Josep Puxeu, said Friday…

Tablas de Daimiel National Park in Spain, shot by Grupoprisas

Spanish wetland facing destruction as farming starves it of water

Giles Tremlett in the Guardian (UK): The EU has begun an investigation into a unique Spanish wetland park that is being devastated by underground fires. Local officials have admitted that mismanaged water resources at the Tablas de Daimiel national park may never recover. "We are on the point of losing the Tablas de Daimiel," said Josep Puxeu, Spain's secretary for state for water.

With less than 1% of the park now covered by water, layers of underground peat have dried out and have started to spontaneously ignite. Park authorities are unable to locate the underground fires until they break to the surface. The wetland park, near the city of Ciudad Real in the central Castilla-La Mancha region, is classified as a Unesco biosphere site and is one of just 14 national parks in Spain. A fresh fire was detected this week, confirming that the peat is still being destroyed.

EU inspectors will investigate how for decades Spanish authorities have allowed thousands of illegal wells to be dug near the park. Scientists say the wells have lowered an aquifer that once spilled water on to the surface of the wetlands but now lies more than 12 metres (40ft) below ground. Despite repeated warnings over the past 20 years, people continue to pump water from the wells, using it to irrigate nearby farmland. "We are at a point of no return," the park director, Carlos Ruíz, warned in a recent report….

One of the parts of Las tablas de Daimiel that hasn't dried out (at least, not by November of 2007 when this image was taken). Shot by Jgg1992, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Heavy rain disrupts high-speed rail travel in Spain

Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: Train travel on a high-speed rail link between Madrid and Seville in the south was disrupted Tuesday due to heavy rains in central Spain, national railway infrastructure company ADIF said.

The rain swept debris along a two-kilometre-long (1.2-mile-long) stretch of the rail link -- which also services tourist centres like Cordoba and Malaga on the coast -- forcing its closure on Monday night, it said in a statement.

Rail traffic resumed on only one of the rail link's two tracks on Tuesday afternoon, causing delays to long-distance trains that affected thousands of passengers. Full service is only expected to resume on Wednesday….

Train passengers in Spain, shot by Josemanuel, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Rainfall to decrease over Iberian Peninsula

Physorg: Scientists have recorded a decline in winter precipitation over the past 60 years in Spain, and they now forecast that precipitation will also decrease in spring and summer. A team from the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (CSIC) has studied rainfall data from 1950 to 2006 and the climate projections for coming decades, showing that less rain will fall in future over the Iberian Peninsula. However, precipitation will continue to be more frequent in winter than in spring-summer.

Have there been any changes to the monthly contributions to total annual precipitation within the Mediterranean basin? Researchers from the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (CSIC) have assessed the changes observed in rainfall patterns since 1950, and are predicting contributions to be lower by the middle of the 21st Century, against a backdrop of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

"We have used the data reported (1950-2006) and simulated various climate models (2040-2060) to look at whether the monthly contribution to the annual total has changed over recent decades, and whether such changes are likely to happen over the medium term", Juan Ignacio López-Moreno, lead author of the study, tells SINC.

…According to the scientists, significant changes have taken place over this area, with disparate effects being noted over the course of the year, and "uniform patterns" identified in the evolution of rain over time. In addition to the changes in the amounts of precipitation falling, López-Moreno says "the climate models suggest new changes will take place over the coming decades"…

The Iberian Peninsula, shot by NASA

Severe water scarcity boosts desalination market, experts say

Edie.net: The threat of severe water scarcity is forcing world governments to invest in desalination technology, industry experts claim. Demand for fresh water is increasing around the world especially in areas with rapidly growing populations or affected by drought, according to international consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

It is set to publish a study on the Spanish water market, which has embraced desalination technology - the process of removing salt and minerals from sea water for drinking water or irrigation. Nuno Oscar Branco, an industry analyst, who has been researching the desalination market, said: "Spain is the largest desalination market in the Mediterranean region, but countries such as Algeria, Morocco or Libya, to name just a few, have joined the desalination bandwagon and are investing heavily on this source of fresh drinking water."

The Mediterranean has endured increasingly severe water shortages in recent years, the consultants point out. And, Spain has led the way with desalinisation. It built its first plant in 1965, they point out, becoming one of the first countries in the region to consider the technology a viable solution to solving water shortages in large urban areas….

Covered sun in Monegros Desert (Saragossa, Spain), shot by Willtron, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Biologists call for a network of protected rivers

Science Daily: An international research team has used the Guadiana River basin [in Spain and Portugal], in which 92% of the species are under threat, as a reference point to measure the loss of aquatic biodiversity and its conservation value. A new study reveals that the state of fragmentation of Iberian river basins is "seriously endangering" the freshwater fish that inhabit them, and highlights the need to create new protected aquatic reserves.

"At present, conservation of waterways is both insufficient and inefficient, as water courses within nature reserves are nearly always used simply as administrative boundaries that do not guarantee the conservation of aquatic biodiversity", Virgilio Hemoso, chief author of the new study and a researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia, tells SINC.

The study, which has been published in the latest issue of Hydrobiologia, is based on the premise that there are few nature reserves for the conservation of aquatic biodiversity. "Rivers have been treated as being of secondary importance, unless they represent an opportunity to conserve the land environment", Hermoso adds.

…In order to design a reserve system that protects aquatic biodiversity, the biologists evaluated the fish communities in the Guadiana River basin. With so few resources being devoted to conservation, and conservation itself competing with other human uses, the researcher stresses that "it is more sensible to focus conservation efforts on water courses with healthy populations".

In order to do this, the team measured potential biodiversity loss and calculated the conservation value. Their method highlights areas that have not suffered significant losses of biodiversity and which "are therefore worthy of special attention."
Guadiana River basin, a reference point in conservation

In the context of the Mediterranean, the Guadiana River basin stands out due to both its richness in freshwater fish species, "which is only comparable to that found in two other river basins: the River Po in northern Italy and the River Orontes in southern Turkey", and the degree to which it is threatened. "This makes it an ideal place to hone tools and processes which could be applied to other Mediterranean river basins", Hermoso states.

An aerial view of the Guadiana River in Portugal, shot by Besnier.m, Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License