• 30,000 trees and bushes have been planted between 2016 and 2019 in Valencia, Alicante, Catalonia, Almería, the Canary Islands, Italy, Greece and Portugal, as part of a Life project.
• A burned area in 2012 near Tous (Valencia) and an abandoned area in Xixona (Alicante) have been reforested, where 85% more trees than usual have survived in a joint action with the Desertification Research Center (CIDE -CSIC, UV, GVA).
• The new system increases the success of plantations, the survival and development of trees and improves economic profitability.
An international team of experts, including researchers from the Desertification Research Center (CIDE), has shown that using the Cocoon system -biodegradable tanks to recover degraded areas- increases the success of reforestations. These cardboard tanks are buried in the soil filled with water and hydrate and protect the tree during the first year of life, the most sensitive one, and then decompose in the soil. The work is part of the European project Life The Green Link,
of which the final results have recently been presented. The biodegradable tank system is developed by the Dutch Land Life Company. Between 2016 and 2019, some 30,000 trees and shrubs have been planted using this innovative technology in Valencia, Alicante, Catalonia, Almeria, the Canary Islands, Italy, Greece and Portugal. Planting with Cocoon has been more effective than planting using the usual system, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. The plantations have been made in areas in recovery phase: burned areas, marginal or abandoned lands, or from previous mining activities, among others.
The results are encouraging and the experts recognize that Cocoon can contribute to reforesting degraded areas in the current context of climate emergency. “Adapting to climate change means this: developing and testing new technologies that help us to restore degraded areas, bearing in mind that extreme episodes will become increasingly intense and frequent,” says Vicenç Carabassa, CREAF researcher and project coordinator.
The economic study of this technology is very optimistic and shows that reforesting with Cocoon can be up to 4 times more profitable than doing it in the usual way, if we take into account the cost in relation to the results obtained. In addition, it is a way of extending the planting window: it allows to bring it forward to September or even August, and also to delay it to the end of spring or early summer. The economic analysis was carried out by Land Life Company and VOLTERRA.
The project has involved local stakeholders in each area in all reforestations: private companies, administrations, farmers, ranchers, forest owners and NGOs. Seven pilot experiences have been carried out where reforestation with Cocoon has been contrasted with respect to a common recovery, and 7,500 biodegradable donuts have been distributed to replicate the action in different situations and realities, in order to collect more data and impressions.
Encouraging results
In Valencia, an area burned in 2012 near Tous (Ribera Alta) has been reforested, which was not recovering naturally as a forest, but was turning into a scrubland. An abandoned area has also been recovered in Alicante, in the municipality of Xixona (Alacantí), where mainly agricultural and forest species have been planted, such as strawberry tree, which has worked surprisingly well, with some specimens that have had a spectacular development. “The success in this case is also convincing, since the trees planted by means of Cocoon have survived 85% more than those reforested in the usual way until now”, says Julián Campo, researcher at the Desertification Research Center (CIDE).
In Almeria, the pilot test has been oriented mainly to boost the traditional agricultural activity itself with the cultivation of organic almonds, one of the world's leading producers. To this end, 2,000 almond trees of different varieties have been planted in an abandoned, barren area with no water available. This action has been promoted in collaboration with the Asociación AlVelal and Universidad de Almeria.
An all-terrain tank
One of the most difficult planting sites was the Tifaracás area on the island of Gran Canaria. This region is one of the driest, with less than 200 mm of average rainfall, with even lower values in recent years. In this biosphere reserve, the reforestations carried out before testing the Cocoon system had been very costly. The plantations had to be irrigated using complex systems because otherwise mortality rates reached 100%. “It is an extremely arid environment with very steep slopes, very stony and poor soils and with a huge problem of ‘herbivory’ by goats, which made this place the most difficult to repopulate,” explains Vicenç Carabassa. With the Cocoon, a survival rate of between 20 and 80% has been achieved, depending on the species. The work was carried out with the support of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria and the company GESPLAN.
Cocoon has made it possible to reforest burned areas such as El Bruc, in Catalonia, which suffered a fire in 2015. In this case, about 4,000 trees of forest species such as holm oak, kermes oak and oak, but also agricultural species such as olive, walnut, cherry and fig trees, among others, have been planted. The intention is to recover the burned area, but not in the form of a white pine forest, which had been burned, but by adopting a form of agroforestry mosaic, a landscape much more resistant to fires and with greater biodiversity. The results obtained thanks to Cocoon are very favorable: 60% of the trees have survived, twice as many as with the usual methods. In this case, it has also been proven that success is conditioned by the variety planted. In this action, the company VOLTERRA planted 2,000 trees of 3 varieties of olive tree: arbequina, vera and cornicabra. The latter is the one that has given the best results, since 77% of the cornicabra olive trees have prospered thanks to Cocoon.
The project has also promoted plantations in Italy (in Calabria), in Portugal and in Greece (in Ptolemais), where an open-pit coal mine has been reforested in a joint venture with the Greek research center The Centre for Research & Technology, Hellas (CERTH).
CIDE Communication
