Today we have participated in the conference “Facing global change in protected areas”, within the framework of the I International Mountain Congress, which is being held from March 5 to 10 in Granada. Our director, Sonia Castañeda, has announced the main results of the ten years of operation of the Global Change Monitoring Network in National Parks and some of the most representative experiences and research projects linked to mountain ecosystems that the Biodiversity Foundation has been supporting from the Network.

The project is an example of cooperation between the public and private sectors, as it is the result of a collaboration agreement between the National Parks Autonomous Body, the Spanish Office for Climate Change, the State Meteorological Agency and the Biodiversity Foundation, all of them from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and the Environment, and has had the support of Ferrovial Agromán.

The Global Change Monitoring initiative in the National Parks Network was launched in 2008 to find out how the phenomenon of global change affects us, which includes, among other alterations, climate change. It is a pioneering program for the evaluation and monitoring of ecosystems in National Parks that allows us to know the impacts that may be generated as a result of climate change. To achieve this objective, it has a network of multi-parameter weather stations, unique in the world, for the collection and open dissemination of climatological data.

In these ten years of the Network’s history, we have supported 58 research projects, of which 31 have received financial aid from the Biodiversity Foundation for a total of €1,250,000. This year, in addition, the report “Closely observing global change in Spanish National Parks” will be available, which analyzes all the research activity linked to the Network until 2015.

The Network currently has 21 stations and an oceanographic buoy, present in seven National Parks (Sierra Nevada, Picos de Europa, Atlantic Islands, Ordesa and Monte Perdido, Cabañeros, Cabrera, Teide). The roadmap set for the period 2016-2020 contemplates the incorporation of the entire Network of National Parks, in addition to linking biological monitoring to the climate data of the network and incorporating relevant actors, among other actions.

Do you want to know what other climate change adaptation and mitigation projects we are supporting?

You can follow our Twitter @FBiodiversidad where through the hashtags #AdaptacionCC and #CambioClimatico, we keep you informad@ of all the news and actions in the field of climate change.

You can also visit the lifeshara.com website to find out about all the actions we are implementing within the framework of this project, which aims to strengthen the governance of adaptation to climate change and increase resilience in Spain and Portugal.