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Los Pedroches living lab at the XII Iberian Congress of Water Management and Planning

The I-CISK project overall approach and objectives, as well as the progress of Los Pedroches living lab were presented at the XII Iberian Congress of Water Management and Planning organized by the New Water Culture Foundation on January 25-27, 2023 in Murcia (Spain).

At first, Nuria Hernández-Mora (UCM) presented an overview of the project’s objectives: to co-generate climate services that respond to the needs of local actors on a relevant socio-temporal scale. Thanks to the iterative dialogue approach, engaging different organizations that make up the multi-stakeholder platform of the laboratory, it was possible to identify their information needs for better decision-making in the agricultural, livestock and forestry sectors. Through a field visit and virtual meetings, a series of interesting climate services have been identified, which were validated in the first face-to-face workshop held in October 2022.

The co-creation process continues during 2023, integrating local data and results from international models derived from the Copernicus program, exploring the most suitable visualization tools, and analyzing potential drought adaptation measures.

The application of this iterative methodology with local actors was especially relevant for the hydrological characterization of the area, provided the scarcity of monitoring networks and data. Nikoletta Ropero had the opportunity to present the progress made in the study of groundwater bodies, a crucial water source in Los Pedroches, which allowed her to win the Best Young Communication award.

Water resources in the area are increasingly scarce, and it is essential to better understand its hydrological functioning in order to reduce the vulnerability of local activities in the face of droughts. The high heterogeneity of aquifer formations linked to the scarcity of data means that hydrology can only be characterized by combining quantitative and qualitative information. Currently, the project is developing a survey to collect information on the state of rivers, streams and wells that local actors observe in their territory, so that it can be integrated into a simulation model and results consolidated through field work planned for this spring. Thanks to these efforts, we hope to be able to model the hydrological behavior of Los Pedroches, analyze its correlation with the climate information and the evolution of water use in the local agricultural and livestock sectors.

High vulnerability to drought episodes puts at risk this territory and its great ecological and socioeconomic values, thus requiring effective and science-based management tools.

The “information desert” on the water bodies in Los Pedroches is not a justification for inaction towards the risks derived from climate change. For this reason, I-CISK generates innovative methodologies for the co-creation of climate services that integrate different sources and forms of data and knowledge.