Improving the success of reflorestations in semi-arid zones: adaptation to the climate change scenery

Abstract

The recent expansion of the semi-arid climate throughout the Alentejo in Portugal and the increasing impact of climate change require local adaptation. Increasing native forest represents an ecosystem-wide strategy as it increases resilience and ecosystem services by increasing: organic matter in soil, carbon and nitrogen, biodiversity, water infiltration, etc. Additionally, decreases susceptibility to desertification. For this reason, large areas have been reforested with native species of holm and oak in the Alentejo, but with a low success rate. The objective of this work is to demonstrate how it is possible to reduce the cost-benefit of reforestation through an innovative approach. For this, we developed a model that points out which zones can: i) be easily regenerated with low costs; (Ii) must be subject to assisted afforestation, supported by various techniques; Iii) must be occupied by alternative activities due to the difficulty in reforesting them. By tailoring efforts and energy to each site through the knowledge of its ecology we substantially reduce cost-effectiveness, improving long-term survival rates. We have considered the objectives of all stakeholders, in order to ensure compliance with national and international policies (such as the Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification Conventions), the achievement of the owners' objectives. We used the knowledge gained in the past with successive afforestation, including the degree of success, which was first gathered in a geographic database. We transfer the best practices observed in the historical semiarid to the current semiarid, where the greatest impacts of climate change will be verified in the future. Finally, we communicated all the results of the project to the public, namely through workshops for stakeholders, editing a book with best practices and a website and model developed for application for mobile devices.

Keywords: Desertification, adaptation to climate change, forest, biodiversity.