Spain’s Sierra Nevada considered major natural research laboratory for global change

SIERRA Nevada is currently one of the major centres of biodiversity in Spain, considered a natural laboratory in the service of science.

Traditionally known for its natural values, Sierra Nevada’s ecosystems have been studied for decades both through satellites and sensors installed on the national park, which has given valued data in global change scenarios.

The comprehensive information obtained from the study of Sierra Nevada’s ecosystems has been recently compiled together in the book “Landscape of the Sierra Nevada. A unique laboratory of global processes in Spain.”

This multidisciplinary book on the Spanish Sierra Nevada is considered the first study of a single mountain range with a multidisciplinary approach by collecting information on all abiotic factors (a non-living part of an ecosystem that shapes its environment such as climate and geology), biological inventory (flora and fauna, both aquatic and terrestrial) and the human dimension in mountains.

As explained by Regino Zamora, professor of the Department of Ecology at the University of Granada, and editor of the book with University of Barcelona professor Marc Oliva, the uniqueness of the Sierra Nevada means that it is so ‘diverse and heterogeneous’ that knowledge of its ecosystems can be extrapolated to the rest of the mountains of Europe and North Africa.

Since 1970 there have been more than 800 scientific publications on biodiversity, ecology and environmental aspects in the Sierra Nevada with the work of more than 1,500 researchers from various research centres in Spain and other countries.

The book, published by Springer Publishing, which joins these other scientific publications, highlights the importance of Sierra Nevada ecosystems as natural laboratories for understanding the functioning of ecosystems in scenarios of global change, with their regional and global connections.

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