The Secretary General for Territory and Biodiversity and President of the Board of Trustees of the Biodiversity Foundation, Antonio Serrano, presented today in the Cabrera Archipelago National Park the project “Establishment of the global change monitoring network in National Parks”, carried out by the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of the Environment, the Autonomous National Parks Body, the Spanish Office for Climate Change and the National Institute of Meteorology.

During this presentation ceremony, Antonio Serrano was accompanied by the director of the Biodiversity Foundation, María Artola, and the president of the Autonomous National Parks Agency, Juan Garay.

This project aims to develop a system of evaluation and monitoring of the ecosystems present in Spanish national parks, based on the information obtained from the collection of data in situ. This work is planned in the Sierra Nevada, Picos de Europa, Teide and Cabrera National Parks, as each of them is the most representative of the variety of ecosystems present in the parks.

The main objective of this pioneering initiative is to collect climate, air and water quality data in these National Parks, along with the monitoring of the transformation caused by global change in the ecosystems in all of them. The information collected will constitute an open database to be used by the national and international scientific community through the Internet, as research material for projects related to global change that are currently being carried out or that may be developed in these protected natural areas.

Among other actions, this initiative includes the installation of eighteen weather stations with a data recording computer that will transmit the data obtained via GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) or via satellite. Eight of these stations will be located in the Sierra Nevada National Park; eight in the Picos de Europa National Park and two in the Cabrera National Park (one land and one sea).

The project contemplates the evaluation and monitoring of climatic and biological indicators. The advice of the Spanish Office for Climate Change, OECC, and the National Institute of Meteorology, INM, has made it possible to define the common basic instrumentation that all the stations of the project must have to measure climate parameters.

Thus, for the implementation of this project, the Biodiversity Foundation signed collaboration agreements with the Universities located in the areas of influence of the parks, such as the University of Granada, the University of Oviedo, as well as with the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies, IMEDEA, in which the University of the Balearic Islands and the Higher Council for Scientific Research participate. CSIC. These entities provide scientific support and advice for the development of the entire project and for the performance of various studies related to global change.

Likewise, the Complutense University of Madrid participates in the determination of the parameters or indicators for measuring global change in the National Parks. Likewise, the Spanish Office for Climate Change and the National Institute of Meteorology have been involved in the development of this initiative since February 2006.

The project “Establishment of the global change monitoring network in National Parks” will continue thanks to the agreement signed by the General Secretariat for the Prevention of Pollution and Climate Change, on which the National Institute of Meteorology and the General Directorate of the Spanish Office for Climate Change depend; the General Secretariat for Territory and Biodiversity, on which the Autonomous Agency for National Parks depends, which will coordinate this initiative, and the Biodiversity Foundation.