CREAF

Mediterranean metropolitan areas are bound to play a key role in the conservation of European biodiversity. On the one hand, because the Mediterranean basin is considered a global biodiversity hot spot due to its concentration of species and communities of interest for conservation. And on the other, because there is increasing awareness of the importance of conserving biodiversity in cities and their metropolitan areas to ensure the population's access to ecosystem goods and services that only the former provides.

 

The Barcelona Metropolitan Area has commissioned CREAF to carry out several preliminary works that assess the state of conservation of its biodiversity, the pressures on it and the provision of ecosystem services by the different elements of the green infrastructure. However, this diagnose is conditioned by the little detail and updating of the available information. Carrying out more detailed diagnoses at the municipal level could help alleviate this deficiency, although at the moment few municipalities have followed this initiative. The case of the municipality of Viladecans is, in this sense, especially paradigmatic. Due to its geographical location, Viladecans stands out for its high biodiversity and for the role it can play in the green infrastructure of the Barcelona metropolitan area. Probably due to this, the municipality has a long experience in cataloguing its biodiversity, especially with regard to the areas included in the Natura 2000 Network. However, it is necessary to carry out a comprehensive and sufficiently updated vision of the conservation status of this biodiversity, which allows identifying and locating the main existing values and information gaps.

 

The project will work on two scales responding to two different orders from the Viladecans town hall:

1) Analysis of the state of naturalization of the urban case of the municipality

2) Development of the bases for a biodiversity strategy for the entire municipality, with the following actions: