Sustainable climate change adaptation of forestry in the province of Soria, Spain

Soria's forests, in the Castilla y Leon Autonomous Community, face climate projections showing that within 50-100 years key tree species may fall outside their adaptive ranges. Rising summer minimum temperatures disrupt dormancy/growth cycles, warmer and shorter winters increase pest populations and disease spread, and droughts reduce stand resilience. Fire risk is rising from agricultural-machinery ignition near forest edges, and forest management is hampered by abandonment of privately owned forests with undefined ownership -- 70% of Spain's forests are private, and only about 20% of those have management tools in place.

The LIFE Soria ForestAdapt project aims to increase the resilience of southern European forests to climate change by developing and testing adaptation measures in public and private forest management plans, producing a technical guide for climate-adapted forest management in Soria, with intent to replicate the model across Castilla y Leon, Spain and Southern Europe.

Measures include establishing mixed forests with resilient/varied-age species (e.g. introducing Pinus halepensis/pinea in drier areas, avoiding simultaneous large-area logging and replanting), 'broadleaved enrichment' of coniferous stands, converting agricultural land to forest with government support, a two-level fire-management system (32 watchtowers with guards, 19 thermal cameras plus smoke/visible-camera detection, and year-round forestry-worker fire crews rather than the urban-firefighter model used in most of Spain), rotational fenced grazing (about 20% of forest rested at a time), flexible timing of grazing/hunting/harvest, FSC/PEFC certification (65.6% of public forest, 131,715 ha, already certified; project targets 15,000 new certified hectares), community dissemination/education, the 'SolucionesZero' investment-communication videos aimed at private companies, and AI-assisted/inventory-based forest monitoring plus pheromone-trap pest monitoring and permanent tree-health plots.

Total monitoring cost of the LIFE Soria ForestAdapt project was 702,477 EUR (excluding routine operational fire prevention). Average FSC/PEFC certification cost is 215,010 EUR. The 4-year dissemination budget was 52,165 EUR, the communication budget 125,871 EUR, and 67,350 EUR was allocated for transmission of results (including ZeroSolutions). Companies are reported to be investing in ZeroSolutions proposals on private land, some co-financed by energy companies. 15% of forest-related economic revenue is returned to the province for forest management and infrastructure investment.

Success factors include species/age diversification, an educated stakeholder network, and reinvestment of forest revenue by government and ASFOSO (the private landowners' association) into active management; forest cover in Soria has grown by nearly 8% per the IV National Forest Inventory. Limiting factors include agricultural-forest boundary fire risk at harvest time, limited staff/time for monitoring and policing an open-access forest, coordination difficulties among stakeholders with differing interests, and the practical difficulty of completing the nationally mandated 10-year forest inventory on time.