The Project
Promotes adaptation through the implementation and testing of different landscape management measures to meet climate change related challenges in marginal mid-mountain areas of Spain (La Rioja, Aragón and Catalonia), while improving their socioeconomic development.
Pastures
Pasture recovery through scrubland clearing and introduction of extensive livestock farming
Forests
Forest management for fire risk prevention and maintenance with extensive livestock farming
Vineyards
Introduction and/or optimisation of vineyards in mountain areas
Why MIDMACC?
Southern European mountain areas are considered highly sensitive to climate change impacts due to, among others, the decrease in available water, the drought duration and severity or the increased frequency of fires. In addition, these areas have suffered in the last decade’s rural abandonment and reduction of socioeconomic activities, causing a progressive loss of the mosaic landscape and a revegetation of the mountain slopes.
These processes have reduced the environmental services provided by mountain areas, such as the provision of water to the lower parts of the basins, as well as the sustainability of agrarian and forestry systems and their economic income.
In this context, the project promotes the recuperation of the agro-silvo-pastoral mosaic to reverse this processes and adapt mid-mountain areas to climate change impacts.
Where does MIDMACC work?
LA RIOJA
ARAGON
CATALONIA
The project is developed in La Rioja, Aragon and Catalonia, covering diverse bioclimatic conditions from the subhumid Mediterranean of the Pyrenees to the submediterranean mid-mountains of the Iberian Mountain Range.
Adaptation measures are implemented in pilot areas of the three regions with diversity of environmental and socioeconomic characteristics that facilitate transfer capacity of results to other mountainous regions from southern Europe.
What does MIDMACC do?
Develop landscape adaptation measures in marginal mid-mountain areas in order to improve their environmental and socioeconomic resilience to climate change.
Assess the socio-economic and ecological effectiveness of the applied measures through widespread monitoring and modelling.
Involve the regional managers and stakeholders in the design, development and evaluation of adaptation measures, through decision-making regional committees.
Engage the governments of La Rioja, Aragon and Catalonia in the creation of a coordinated policy framework that improves the sustainable use of mid-mountain areas.
Develop an integrated climate change Adaptation Guidelines for mid-mountain areas.
Carry out awareness and capacity building activities on adaptation to climate change at local and regional level.
Support the application and further development of European policies related to climate change adaptation in mountainous rural areas.
