This initiative of the Migres Foundation has aimed to monitor global change in order to visualise large-scale ecological dynamics in the Strait of Gibraltar

The Strait of Gibraltar is an area of unique characteristics to observe large-scale changes, as it is located between two continents. It is a key place in the migratory movements of birds between Africa and Europe, as well as being the natural communication between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The project “The Strait of Gibraltar: a scenario for monitoring global change on an intercontinental scale” is an initiative of the Migres Foundation whose objective has been to monitor global change in order to visualise large-scale ecological dynamics in this territory. The initiative has been developed with the support of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition through its call for grants.

Through this project, the technological support has been improved to study the phenomenon of global change in a unique enclave for migratory processes: the Strait of Gibraltar. These improvements translate into the development of a multidisciplinary database accessible from the internet, and consultable by any user through a web application. Using this idea, other entities that work in research on migratory phenomena have been involved, establishing synergies between researchers. For the application of the database, preliminary analyses have been carried out on the effects of global change on the migration of some bird species, and the evolution of the forests that constitute the habitat of these species has also been analyzed.

As a result of the project, a database has been created with half a million biological records and more than 20 million data on geophysical variables, also opening up to the public a system to consult the last 20 years of bird monitoring data in the Strait of Gibraltar. Between 1999 and 2018, 9,817,479 gliding birds have been counted in this scenario and about one and a half million seabirds. In addition, changes in the primary production of the forests adjacent to the Strait of Gibraltar during the last two decades have been quantified according to different forest structures, according to the data based on remote sensing that have been incorporated into our database, detecting 5862 ha with losses of photosynthetic activity.