The pilot action in Mértola aims to enhance the resilience of agroforestry systems to climate change through wildfire prevention and control measures. Activities promote biodiversity, natural regeneration, and sustainable forest management that reduces erosion and strengthens socio-economic opportunities linked to forest use.
This pilot promotes social innovation to reactivate the management of abandoned forests in the province of Soria, combining community engagement and digital marketing strategies with remote sensing tools. The initiative seeks to reconnect absentee forest owners with their land, encourage adaptive management, and provide a replicable model to combat forest abandonment in depopulated areas.
The pilot action in Toledo province focuses on restoring dehesas affected by seca and drought through the application of integrated phytotherapeutic and silvicultural treatments. The goal is to enhance the resilience of holm oak and cork oak stands to climate change, reduce fire risk and biodiversity loss, and generate medium-term environmental and productive benefits linked to livestock farming.
In the Region of Murcia, two pilot actions will be carried out: one in Cehegín (Natura 2000 area) and another in Moratalla (burnt area). Measures will be applied in two plots, one that has been previously managed and another that has not, in order to compare the impact of the project’s measures under both types of management.
The SocialForest consortium has developed research that is already being applied in different pilot sites across regions of Spain, France and Portugal
This toolbox will contain the tools that will allow the implementation of the pilot projects in the three pilot territories. The city of Cartagena, located in the Region of Murcia in Spain, will develop a Rural Transition Lab in the Oeste Region of its territory, a rural and marginalized region of the territory of the community. The pilot project will focus on the definition of new agricultural economic models based on the optimization and preservation of local resources (endogenous species, water recovery by PV panel systems). The Intermunicipal Community of Ave, located in the Norte Region of Portugal, will develop a second Rural Transition Lab. Its pilot project will be implemented in the municipality of Póvoa de Lanhoso and will support the use of endogenous species and local know-how for the development of urbanized areas in order to optimize water use. The Syndicat mixte Est Creuse Développement, located in the Nouvelle Aquitaine region of France, will develop the third Rural Transition Lab at the level of its two communities of municipalities Creuse Confluence and Marche et Combrailles in Aquitaine. The pilot project will address the challenges of preserving endogenous biodiversity and landscapes and the challenges of runoff and soil erosion through the implementation of a sustainable management system for agricultural hedgerows. This toolbox will contain the method used for the territorial dialogue and the GIS tool (common solution): TOOLS for the implementation of the strategy of the RURAL TRANSITION LABS
Under the An-Gel Sudoe project, 8 pilot areas have been selected: Lleida, Lot-et-Garonne, Bordeaux, Dordogne (x2), Rioja Alavesa, Murcia and Braganza. In each of these areas, work will be carried out in collaboration with a group of associated producers, either using farms under real production conditions or involving them in the technical follow-up of the tests. The prevention, adaptation and mitigation techniques to be tested will be (activities 2.1 and 2.2): — High precision foliar spraying (active solution). — Active ventilation (active solution). — Soil moisture management (semi-passive solution, linked to high-precision spraying, but strategically applied in a preventive and non-reactive manner). — Soil cover management — Hot hedges (passive solution). — Convective drainage of cold air — Late pruning of vines to delay the appearance of frost (solution intended to minimise the destructive effects of frost). The final solution will be the use of one of these techniques or a possible combination of several of them to adapt perfectly to the constraints of farmers in a given area. For example, a cold-breaker hedge can be used to limit the flow of cold air in the plot (passive solution), combined with controlling soil moisture by influencing the vegetation cover or by high-precision spraying (in the foliage) a few days before frost (semi-passive solution) or, if necessary, during intense frost episodes (active solution), if water resources are available. Therefore, it is considered a single solution, as it is conceived as a “toolbox” that allows combining different techniques to offer effective solutions according to the particular context of the different farms participating in the project as pilot centres.
The early warning system will make it possible to anticipate spring frost situations so that active means can be prepared to complement passive and semi-passive solutions, which are of a continuous nature. The system will combine models weather forecast numbers (NPM) with high-precision soil temperature maps developed from local time series. This methodology allows to perform a downscaling process from local information to reach a very high level of accuracy (individual plot level or hyperlocal scale). The system will be highly oriented to provide an easy-to-interpret mobile version in the field, including a system dissemination module for sending alerts via email, SMS and mobile notifications. This system will be integrated as part of the ClimAlert platform, enriching its spectrum of information and attracting new users.
