Atlas Cedar: Spain’s Potential Solution to Combat Climate Change Effects

The Atlas cedar is a species from North Africa (Morocco and Algeria) whose usefulness is fundamental for landscape design and forest repopulation, particularly in Andalusia, the university institution notes in a press release.

The presence of the species "allows us to have an experimental device to study the adaptation of a foreign species from much drier ecosystems, and which could become a species likely to replace other Mediterranean conifers in southern Spain affected by climate change," explains Rafael María Navarro, professor in the Department of Forest Engineering at UCO and specialist in adaptive forestry.

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"If we want to maintain tree structures in conditions of high Mediterranean mountain at high altitude and with a significant component of aridity, the Atlas cedar can be an alternative," said Navarro Cerrillo, a participant in this research work.

Among the measures to reduce the vulnerability of forest systems and increase their resistance and resilience to the effects of climate change, assisted migration, which allows the import of species or genotypes better adapted to the conditions of climate change, such as the Atlas cedar, is an option offered by adaptive forestry.