Summary
The three estuaries of the study area have a wide range of pressures coming from numerous human activities. Some of the major ones are the presence of artificial structures that sharply restrict tidal flow, urban development’s with large land reclamation, presence of invasive species (e.g. Baccharis halimifolia) as a consequence of changes in hydrodynamic-flood conditions, harbour activities and shellfish fishery and urban/industrial discharges into the water.
Some of these pressures come from upstream river bodies and from upstream land uses, standing out the sediment production in the catchment as a consequence of afforestation and fires. The effects of these catchment processes need to be disentangled in order to improve catchment processes, ensuring biodiversity conservation and maintaining or recovering ES provision.
In the terrestrial component, landscape structure and vegetation patterns represent the legacy from harsh management practices during the last 400 years. After the foundation of the “Royal Artillery Factory” in La Cavada in 1616, the native forests in the oriental extreme of the region of Cantabria were intensively exploited for 160 years in order to obtain wood for naval construction until 1795. These catchments have been kept deforested for stockbreeding since then through the combined use of fire and cattle grazing. Thus, a mixture of shrubs and extensive pastureland dominates the area, being mature forest patches relegated to head water basins and marginal lands in steeper hillslopes.
In the context of Global Change it is widely accepted that forests play an important role in the mitigation effects of global warming and the fixation of carbon, regulation of river discharge and hydrological stability at a catchment scale and providing a wide variety of ecosystem services. These ecological functions cannot be replaced by actual human-made reforestations, which lack multiple steps of ecological succession and have nothing to do with biological, physical and chemical soil properties.
For additional information
Date: 2017
This work is funded through the ALICE project: “Improving the management of Atlantic Landscapes: accounting for biodiversity and ecosystem services”. ALICE is a project funded in 75% by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the umbrella of INTERREG Atlantic Area with the application code: EAPA_261/2016. The 11 partners involved in the project are from Portugal, Spain, Northern Ireland, France and the United Kingdom. The three-year project started in November 2017 has cost 3 million euros with 25% covered by the beneficiary partners.
Coordination:
J. Barquín, J. M. Álvarez-Martínez, A. Silió, K. Fustec and J. Ballé