Line of action:

Knowledge generation and management

Spatial scale of work:

National

Line of research:

Desertification, degradation and land restoration

Execution date:

2023

Duration:

01/04/2023 - 31/12/2025

Total budget:

297.014,13 €

Amount of aid from the Biodiversity Foundation:

282.163,42 €

Coordinating entity:

University of Alicante

Desertification is one of the main environmental problems in Spain, whose severity and extent are constantly increasing due to climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources and the lack of effective actions to tackle its causes. Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), sponsored by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, is the main tool at the institutional level to address this phenomenon. ATLAS seeks to contribute to the methodological development of desertification mapping, a scientific challenge that is fully in force and expressly requested in the Spanish National Strategy to Combat Desertification.

Some of the actions included in the project are:

• To gather climatic, socioeconomic and biophysical information related to desertification.
• Study of desertification landscapes in Spain.
• To establish a collection of desertification cases in Spain validated by experts with knowledge of the territory.
• Diagnosis of desertification in Spain, by analyzing the socioeconomic and climatic factors of desertification maps.
• Definition of climate change scenarios, scenarios of projected global socioeconomic changes, and scenarios of changes in agricultural and urban land use.
• Preparation of future desertification probability maps.
• Proposals for action based on the maps generated and recommendations for the implementation of the NDT.