Today, we start a project funded by the Spanish Research Agency. It has a duration of 2 years, we will collaborate with researchers from different Universities (Autónoma de Madrid, Alcalá de Henares, Córdoba, Politécnica de Madrid, Valencia, Castilla-La Mancha, Lausanne) and different organisations (WWF, Fundación para la investigación del Clima, Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, Comunidad de Madrid, Sociedad Botánica Española)
Abstract: between 1939 and 1995 more than 4 million hectares were afforested in Spain. In most of the areas, the main objective was protecting soil against erosion and preventing floods. This, frequently, resulted in dense conifer-dominated forests, poor species diversity, and high vulnerability to climate change. Replacing monospecific afforestation with mixed-species forests would have potential benefits for biodiversity and society. Here, we will consider a multidisciplinary procedure to provide innovative tools for the restoration of forests based on the combination, for the first time, of different features: 1) Improve climate change predictions and obsolete vulnerability assessments, through the consideration of singular innovations: 1.1) Ensemble species distribution models (~500 threatened and woody plant species) combining three reliable techniques. 1.2) An innovative hierarchical multi-scale (Spain and Europe) framework, which has proved more efficient than classical methods. 1.3) Updated climate variables and future scenarios related to the recent sixth IPCC report. 1.4) Implementation of three different community-level modelling frameworks to predict plant potential species richness and composition. 5) Latest methodological and evaluation procedures. 2) Improve the contribution of connectivity analyses to forest restoration planning identifying priority landscape patches and corridors to be restored by considering: 2.1) the dynamic connectivity between current and future distribution of forest types, and 2.2) innovative ways of adding land ownership information (i.e., riparian areas and drove roads). 3) Interaction with stakeholdersto improve the decision process through the integration of three organisations (the NGO WWF-Spain, the regional government of Madrid Community, and the Spanish Botanical Society) and a multidisciplinary team of botanists, ecologists, engineers, mathematicians, and zoologists. Our starting hypothesis is that these upgraded tools will support efficient (science-based) ecological restoration agendas by means of an optimised (i.e., more realistic than existing) plant biodiversity forecast applied to different connectivity and future climate change scenarios. It would allow novel and dynamic restoration plans, in comparison to the current static restoration plans, which do not consider future climatic projections or connectivity analysis. The main result will be a webpage with different multilayer maps indicating priority areas to restore and a selection of recommended woody plant species per pixel (~1km2). It will have numerous applications for sustainable and adaptive forest management. The final goal is to have a beneficial impact on the stakeholders managing these ecosystems (European Union, regional and national administrations, NGOs, research centres, etc.). In the long term, if restoration plans are developed to generate more resilient forests, biodiversity and society (i.e., bioeconomy, recreation, climate regulation, human health, water, and wood supply) will be the final beneficiaries. The different approaches proposed here will potentially reduce sampling costs, but the accuracy and suitability of the derived assessments would be optimal (i.e., cost-effective and resource-efficient). These aspects fit perfectly with the definition of “nature-based solutions”, which are a priority for the European Union.
Rubén G. Mateo 