ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access originally published online on April 23, 2009
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2009 66(7):1508-1514; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsp106
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This article appears in the following ICES Journal of Marine Science issue: Effects of Climate Change on the World's Oceans [View the issue table of contents]
Anthropogenic and natural effects on the coastal lagoons in the southwest of Spain (Doñana National Park)
1 Department of Plant Biology and Ecology, University of Seville, 41012 Seville, Spain
2 Department of Applied Physics II, University of Seville, Avda. Reina Mercedes s/n, E-41012 Seville, Spain
Correspondence to A. Sousa: tel: +34 954 556782; fax: +34 954 556786; e-mail: asousa{at}us.es
Sousa, A., García-Murillo, P., Morales, J., and García-Barrón, L. 2009. Anthropogenic and natural effects on the coastal lagoons in the southwest of Spain (Doñana National Park). – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 1508–1514.The Doñana peridunal lagoons, located in the southwest of Spain, have been well studied, because their conservation is of great interest. Since 1965, they have also been affected by the extraction of underground water for local coastal tourist resorts. A reconstruction of the evolution of this series of coastal lagoons reveals that, along with the anthropogenic effect, there was a natural effect resulting from the reactivation of mobile dune fronts that have blocked and filled the original lagoon complex—in the period 1920–1987, the lagoons were reduced by 70.7%. These fronts might have been fed by deposits of marine sand during the climatically driest phases of the Little Ice Age in Andalusia, Spain. Therefore, if the frequency and duration of dry periods increase, as well as droughts as a whole, because of global warming, the desiccation and disappearance of the lagoons could become more widespread, not only at this site in southwestern Europe, but in other Mediterranean coastal ecosystems as well.
Keywords: anthropogenic effect, coastal lagoon, Doñana, Little Ice Age
Received 15 August 2008; accepted 2 March 2009; advance access publication 23 April 2009.