The popular saying goes that after dry summers, early autumns. However, according to the photographs that Josep Soldevila has shared in La Vanguardia’s Readers’ Photos about this autumn in Montseny, it could be said that the proverb is increasingly more obsolete than perennial.
Today, in a context of summer autumns or autumn summers, any hiker who ventures along the paths of the Montseny Natural Park and Biosphere will have as a backdrop a landscape lacking water and with lush vegetation although rough, both being exceptional circumstances due to geography, altitude and season of the year.
“Montseny was extremely dry,” says Llorenç Sáez, botanist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Sáez has been teaching some of his classes precisely in this place in the middle of autumn for 15 years, and expresses that he had never before seen the mountain so lacking in water as now: “A colleague from the university told me that he had never seen the Riera de Gualba so dry.”
The prolongation of summer temperatures and the lack of rain has even made Sáez and his students, on their autumn ascent to Montseny, change their fleece for short sleeves.
Anna Sanitjas, General Director of Forest Ecosystems and Medi Management of the Generalitat, corroborates Sáez’s impressions from her office. “The drought we are suffering is extraordinary, because it is not just another one. It is very intense and we have been going through it for three years now,” she warns.
The lack of rain since 2021, beyond taking a toll on the Catalan swamps, which has led to a historic low of 18.85% of their capacity, has also put the forests on the ropes. According to the latest report on the drought from the body directed by Sanitjas, there is a “never before seen vulnerability of the forest”, and an “increase in forest mortality” due to episodes of extreme weather and other phenomena associated with climate change.
The document also states that 60% of the trees present moderate to severe foliage losses, and that the number of hectares affected by drought in 2022 has already exceeded those of 2021 by 50%, without knowing the 2023 figures.
“The main problem is that there is very little water for the amount of forest there is,” summarizes Sanitjas. In times of high water stress like the present, vegetation enters into competition with itself for water, causing numerous plants and trees to perish as they cannot provide themselves with sufficient resources to survive.
The trees, although during the first year of scarcity they can survive thanks to the reserves, to survive from the second year onwards they begin to defoliate, sacrificing their leaves to consume less water. The experts consulted call this strategy risky, since if there is no new rainfall, the trees could defoliate until they die as they cannot synthesize due to the lack of foliage. “That’s why we say that this summer more trees have died due to drought than due to forest fires,” says the general director of ecosystems.
In addition to the absence of water, the aforementioned report warns of another cause of the rise in mortality, also a consequence of extreme episodes of heat and drought: diseases.
Current climatic conditions have favored the spread of diseases and pests in forest masses, weakened by their lack of adaptation to the current situation, having grown in different climatic conditions. Heat and water stress make trees less resistant, and favors the infestation of pathogens and opportunistic insects such as processionary, borer or shingles.
Sanitjas comments that to avoid the death of trees due to these biotic causes, forestry teams have pest monitoring mechanisms in Catalonia. However, he argues that in terms of plant health, prevention is as necessary as in any other living organism, and to do so, it is necessary to prepare forests and adapt them so that they are more resistant to climate change.
To achieve this goal, experts point out that sustainable forest management is essential: “Sustainable forest management is working the forest to guarantee its survival in future generations, and that its resources can be used to the extent possible.” declares Sanitjas.
However, to deploy fully sustainable management, experts warn that it is first essential to reverse the other major problem that affects the forest environment: the disuse and economic abandonment of Catalan forests. “Currently, only 25-30% of our forests are managed, and the ideal would be to do like the rest of the European countries and reach at least 50%,” explains Jaume Minguell, Head of the Technical Office for Municipal Forest Fire Prevention and Development. Agrarian.
Sáez, for his part, adds that due to the abandonment of recent decades, the extension of territory to be managed is greater than in the past, since uncontrolled growth of new masses of forest has been made possible. “If we superimpose current images from the 50s, 60s, or 70s with those from now, the sharp increase in forest mass is really very striking,” he explains.
Although this growth increases the tree cover of the environment, it can also be critical by excessively multiplying plant density, a factor that, in times of scarcity, worsens competition for resources between plants.
Thus, from the administration, the plans for forest conservation seek to make necessity a virtue, using sustainable forest management to save the forest, and, in turn, to boost forestry exploitations, making them lucrative.
Francisco Lloret, professor of Ecology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and CREAF researcher, warns, however, that any management plan must “be made from a multifunctional perspective, to combine the correct management of the forest with the preservation of biodiversity, and its social and cultural use”.
“The toolbox is full, and it’s good that it is that way, but the same thing can be done everywhere,” Minguell agrees. Under intense monitoring of the different needs of the vegetation, the most appropriate intervention methods are selected depending on the case, such as selective deforestation or controlled burning.
Both techniques allow emptying the undergrowth and removing trees to achieve a lower forest density, remove sick or dead specimens and reduce the stress level of the tree mass. “The forests of the future have to be less dense to be healthier,” explains Sanitjas.
With the extracted wood, it is proposed that it be processed and subsequently sold as a local product, both for the construction industry and for the creation of biomass. Following this line, both from Acció Climàtica and provincial councils and municipalities, they have been enabling subsidy and aid lines for landowners for years in order to boost their farms and stop them from being in deficit.
The data indicates that up to 75% of the forest lands are private, although they warn that the idea is that the majority of farms can be economically viable on their own: “With a checkbook and subsidy we cannot reach all the forests in Catalonia,” says Sanitjas.
This trend of economic reuse has already had some success given the emergence of rural property owners associations such as Estella del Montseny, which sells wood chips from the trees on their farms to local buyers. “This consumption stimulates the economic activity of the primary sector, and is the best way to involve general society in the preservation of forests,” argues Minguell.
Beyond logging, another recommended tool for sustainable management is the involvement of shepherds in clearing the mountains, through strategic grazing. The anti-fire expert defends that the herds can feed on the undergrowth and free up strategic plots with a high bush load, preparing the ground for possible complications, such as fires.
An environment that is too wooded and very dry is a clear risk factor for the spread of fire. “If there is too much fuel load in the forest and the structure of the forests is less prepared, larger and more difficult to control fires can be triggered,” says Minguell.
Likewise, to prevent the spread of fires, Miguell also maintains that it is a priority to manage the landscape so that it is “mosaic”, and work to have a more divided territory with more open spaces and less forest continuity.
Despite the deforestation of some areas, the experts consulted defend that the reduction in the number of trees is perfectly compatible with the preservation of flora and fauna. “I believe that sometimes there is a misunderstanding that forest management is incompatible with biodiversity,” says Sanitjas.
In forest restructuring work, all variables and impact measures are always taken into account so that they are never harmful: “If, for example, in a forest area you have a raptor’s nest, specific corrective measures would be taken,” he points out. the expert.
A similar opinion is expressed by Sáez, who also considers that forest management will serve to maintain landscapes of great environmental heterogeneity, modifying them to increase their variety: “We will seek to have mature and young trees of different species, with open spaces and even leaving remains of trees to serve as a refuge for invertebrates and fungi”.
In fact, they warn that the biodiversity of the Catalan landscape is one of the most key aspects to protect from the effects of climate change. “The landscape that we find in the Iberian northeast is of great complexity and diversity,” says Sáez.
Regarding the future, Lloret and Sáez warn that predicting what lies ahead for the forest in Catalonia is highly speculative. Based on the available projection models, many tree species will increase in height, and will see their distribution areas more restricted as arid conditions spread across the territory.
“In the long term we have to assume a change in the landscape, because there will be species that will not be able to adapt,” warns Sanitjas. Sáez and Minguell even maintain that it is possible that in the coming decades some species will become extinct from the Catalan landscape, as is the case of some high mountain plants.
However, none of them consider the panorama impossible to save. “We have an active role as managers of the territory, and if we work the forest it will be beneficial so that many species can survive,” says Minguell; “We have room for intervention to modulate this change, which we know will end up happening,” he concludes.
Because what all scientists are certain about is the ecological treasure that the Catalan forest represents for Europe: “There is more biodiversity between Barcelona and Cerdanya than between Moscow and Vladivostok,” concludes Sáez.
Saving forests is essential to fight the effects of climate change, and ensure a sustainable future for both nature and the economy or society. In fact, it could even serve to green the proverb, because as Gunther Grass said: “When we let the forest die, the words lose their meaning.”
