‘The country is becoming a desert’: Drought-struck Spain is running out of water | Hacker News Reader

‘The country is becoming a desert’: Drought-struck Spain is running out of water

france24.com

32 pointsrntn17 comments

Spain has seen massive unregulated expansion of subtropical fruits like mango and avocado, irrigated by illegal wells [0]. This has been long in the making and warned about [1]

[0] https://www.freshfruitportal.com/news/2023/05/10/spain-over-...

[1] https://www.surinenglish.com/malaga/axarquia/malaga-environm...

An intersting measure I've seen used in Spain to alleviate evaporation in water reservoirs is to place a few layers of hollow floating balls on top of the water. It blocks the sun from heating up the water.

It rained a bit the last few days in Catalonia but the forests are very dry and the summer could be dangerous for fires if we don't get more rain.

There's a great video about those from Veritasium:

https://youtu.be/uxPdPpi5W4o

Ok I may have missed the bromate part! Thanks for posting

All supermarket vegetables in Europe are coming from Spain or Netherlands. All water goes to fields that are practically deserts. Same for Hungary, France and Netherlands.

Lmao, maybe reconsider calling The Netherlands a desert

Probably the only country in Europe that can safely export water intensive crops...

Spain doesn't grow it's vegetables in fields, it grows them in huge clusters of greenhouses that are visible pretty much from space. Go on Google maps and look at a white area of Spain near almeria. It's not white, it's greenhouses.

Huge parts of Spain have always been deserts:

https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-...

The problem of Spain is intense anthropogenic land (mis-)use including deforestation and mining, which led to the desertification especially in the south in the first place; this has been happening since pre-historic times. So, no, there shouldn't be deserts in Spain right now, and they are for the most part not natural. Read further here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00346... (free version available via google search on ResearchGate)

Exactly. Los Monegros was until 1766 Europes largest oak (encina) forest. It had been a communal forest. The forest was privatized and cut to cultivate cereal.

Does Spain have any reforestation efforts planned for areas experiencing anthropogenic desertification?

Without the will to jail arsonists first is a waste of money.

Huh, it makes me wonder how the Black Forest in Germany was preserved.

It mostly wasn’t. What you see now is a tiny remnant.

The linked article is about deforestation by humans and is irrelevant to the fact that huge parts of Spain have long been deserts.

Deforestation is the only major relevant factor that led to the formation of any desert in Spain, and this started a "long" time ago, and is purely and simply controlled by humans. For example, the famous Tabernas desert is the result of deforestation, followed by intensive erosion.

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