Unraveling Misunderstandings about Desertification: The Paradoxical Case of the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin in Southeast Spain

Abstract

From its origins, the concept of desertification has been controversial. The prevailing confusion between two desertification visions, one that considers it as the expansion of deserts and another that emphasizes its anthropogenic component, has been transferred to society. Here we illustrate misunderstandings about desertification using a very illustrative case from the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin (Almeria, Spain), where striking badlands that are often used as an image of desertification coexist with an intensive olive agriculture that is irreversibly deteriorating the only oasis in continental Europe (Los Molinos spring). The olive tree is a traditional Mediterranean dryland crop and until the 1950s only about 200 ha were irrigated in this area. However, the profitability of the crop has caused irrigation to expand to 4400 ha in the last two decades. The process of intensification has been reinforced giving way to super-intensive irrigation, which involves going from 210 to 1550 trees/ha, which in a few years already occupies more than 1500 ha. The effects on the water balance of the aquifer feeding these crops have been severe, and the flow of the Los Molinos spring has gone from more than 40 L/s for the period 1970–2000 to the current 7.28 L/s. Unraveling the mechanisms of land degradation and its main drivers are the first step to propose management actions to achieve a more sustainable use of resources and to combat desertification.

Olive Tree Biovolume from UAV Multi-Resolution Image Segmentation with Mask R-CNN

“…Most of the world’s olive oil—around 2 million tones (66% of global production)—is produced in the European Union. Although recent intensification techniques organise olive trees in hedgerows [ 1 ], most olive groves are rainfed and trees are planted at ~6 m spacing. The main producers are Spain (66% of EU production), Italy (15%), Greece (13%) and Portugal (5%).…”

Quantitative Classification of Desertification Severity for Degraded Aquifer Based on Remotely Sensed Drought Assessment

“…Finally, although climate change and impact of desertification on agricultural production is beyond the scope of this research effort, it is stated that climate change affects the hydrological potential of a region and agricultural production is threatened by groundwater depletion and worsening of water quality in semiarid regions. For the specific case study of the degraded aquifer of Lake Karla watershed, the regions with the high desertification risk suffer from severe groundwater depletion as many studies around the world have mentioned [46][47][48]. Nevertheless, with nearly one in six people worldwide presently at risk from the impacts of land degradation, much work remains in terms of monitoring and preventing desertification, understanding causal interactions, and education.…”

The Scenic Beauty of Geosites and Its Relation to Their Scientific Value and Geoscience Knowledge of Tourists: A Case Study from Southeastern Spain

“…Several mineral deposits (e.g., lead, iron, gold amongst others) have been mined from prehistory into modern times [78,90,91], of which several traces are still preserved in the landscape. Next to mining, other traces of past human-environment interactions on the landscape can be observed such as old farms and agricultural terraces being abandoned in the mountains [92,93], intensive (greenhouse) agriculture in the coastal and alluvial plains [94][95][96][97] and tourism development in the coastal areas (littoralization) [98] with its large impacts on groundwater hydrology [96,[98][99][100].…”