National parks & biodiversity
The province has different types of protected areas, including regional nature parks and a national park.
Delta de l'Ebre Natural Park: classified asa biosphere reserve by UNESCO, the natural park protects the largest delta in the western Mediterranean, a vast area of rice, market gardening and arboriculture. It is also home to lagoons and wetlands that are habitats for migratory and resident birds. The Bay of Alfacs is the last refuge of the great nacres, an endangered species, thanks to the isthmus of Trabucador, a sand barrier that protects the bay. The isthmus, which preserves the bay from a high level of salinity and from the parasite that decimates the great nacre, is however threatened by submersion. It has undergone reinforcement work.
Risks related to urbanization
Land use planning has contributed to the region's vulnerability to natural risks. Indeed, the artificialization of land leads to a fragmentation of natural environments, and the sealing of soils no longer allows for adequate infiltration of rainwater. In addition, some constructions have been built in flood-prone areas.
Climate change
Catalonia is considered a "hot-spot" of climate change, that is, an area where the temperature increase is higher than the global average. Global warming, which is already underway, is resulting in a greater frequency and intensity of extreme events: droughts, heat waves, fires, floods, storms. Examples include the heat wave in the summer of 2021 followed by a forest fire in the province of Tarragona, the storm Filomena in January 2021, or the storm Gloria in January 2020, which caused the sea to advance 3 km inland in the Ebro Delta, with waves of more than 6 m high, and beaches that were stripped of one third of their sand.
Climate change is also accelerating coastal erosion and the retreat of beaches, places of attractiveness of the region. It disrupts marine biodiversity, with deleterious effects on plankton (via calcification of the oceans) and the migration of species. It also favors the acclimatization of parasites, such asHaplosporidium pinnae
, which has caused a significant mortality rate in the great nacre, a species of shellfish endemic to the Mediterranean, declared in 2019 "endangered species". The tropicalization of the climate also raises questions of food resilience and human health (vector-borne diseases, heat waves).Saving the Ebro Delta
The erosion of the Trabucador, together with that of the beaches, threatens to submerge the Ebro Delta. Another symbol of the region, the Bouda lighthouse, now located 3.5 km from the sea, was built on the coast, east of the delta, in the late nineteenth century. The development of the territory is also responsible for the progressive disappearance of the delta. The dams that have been built have accelerated erosion, preventing the deposition of nearly 90% of the sediment, thereby threatening agricultural land. A plan to protect the Ebro Delta, published in 2021, aims to curb the phenomenon, by depositing in the delta the sediments stored in the reservoirs of the dams. The plan also provides for the regeneration of dune ecosystems.
