Manuel I. Cerrillo

Selección de áreas prioritarias para la conservación de flora gipsícola en el sureste de la Península Ibérica

Recent studies have highlighted the gypsum outcrops of Almeria (southeast Spain) as the most outstanding for the conservation of Iberian gypsophilous flora. The need of preserving this natural heritage and the impossibility to protect all the outcrops present within the territory, led us to identify which areas should be considered as of priority for conservation. To this end, we establish as a priority that the proposed conservation network of sites should include all gypsophyte species at least once. Other possible conservation goals on which to base the area selection and the associated scenarios were also taken into account. We first elaborated a cartography for the gypsophytes based on 10 km sided-cells. Next, in order to rank the importance of each locality, several commonly employed conservation criteria (diversity, rarity of the flora, complementarity) were applied to the cartographic information, and the findings obtained by each procedure contrasted. The results showed that protecting the deposits found in three cells (Sorbas, already protected because of its geomorphological singularity, Venta de los Yesos and Topares) would allow the representation of each species at least once and to achieve several complementary conservation targets. The findings are discussed within the context of the social and administrative peculiarities of the area.