Granada, March 1, 2022. The LIFE Wood for Future/Madera para el Futuro project is going to ask the Junta de Andalucía to include the planting of poplar trees in the Vega de Granada as part of its strategy against air pollution in the Metropolitan area of Granada. Poplars, a fast-growing species, absorb a large amount of CO2, gases and polluting particles from urban traffic, so encouraging their cultivation would be a quick and effective measure to reduce environmental pollution, which would be perfectly complemented with sustainable mobility policies such as the promotion of public transport.

The project led by the University and the Provincial Council will ask the Ministries of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development and Development, Infrastructure and Land Management to participate in the working group formed by the state, regional and provincial administrations along with 22 municipalities in the Metropolitan Area to present their proposals, said Antolino Gallego, professor of Applied Physics at the UGR and project coordinator.

The heads of both ministries, Carmen Crespo and Marifrán Carazo, announced last November the investment of 10 million euros in the implementation of an air quality plan for the Metropolitan Area of Granada, within its Green Revolution of Andalusia initiative.

Granada is the second city with the worst air quality in Spain, according to the Sustainability Observatory. The researchers and technicians of LIFE Wood for the Future believe that the recovery of the poplar groves that dotted the Vega of Granada just a few years ago, together with measures in favor of sustainable mobility, could radically reverse this situation. In Granada there were once 12,000 hectares of poplar trees at the beginning of this century and today there are only 3,000 left, but there is potential for up to 30,000 according to the National Poplar Commission.

Due to the rapid growth of this species – ‘Populus’ can reach a height of about 20 meters in ten years – poplar trees have a great capacity to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and act as effective ‘green lungs’. “The carbon fixation in a hectare of poplar is about 20 tons per year, up to 30 times more than what is stored by herbaceous crops for which they have often been replaced, such as asparagus,” says Enrique Pérez Sánchez-Cañete, professor at the UGR and researcher of LIFE Wood for the Future.

This professor of Environmental Physics at the UGR emphasizes that poplars absorb various polluting gases, such as nitrogen dioxide, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and ozone, as well as particles from traffic and heating boilers, which they trap in the leaves and bark. According to their calculations, in 2002 the province had 12,000 hectares that consumed the emissions of 384,000 vehicles and provided oxygen for 1.7 million inhabitants. However, the current surface area of poplar groves has been reduced by 75%, causing a similar reduction in their pollutant-absorbing capacity. One of the actions planned by LIFE Wood for the Future is to install air quality stations inside and outside the poplar groves of the Vega to quantify this filtering action.

In addition, poplar groves act as natural vaporizers, as they increase the humidity of the air and lower the temperature by 3 to 6 degrees in summer. Poplar trees are excellent filtering agents of water pollution. In the Vega de Granada, they have traditionally been irrigated with poorly treated urban wastewater, which recharges the aquifers, improves soil fertility and prevents flooding. Finally, poplar trees help to prevent soil erosion and attract a large biodiversity.

LIFE Wood for Future/Madera para el Futuro, which has obtained funding from the European Union’s LIFE Program [LIFE 20 CCA/ES/001656] for the environment and climate action, is integrated by the University of Granada, the Diputación Provincial, the Confederación de Organizaciones de Selvicultores de España, the University of Santiago de Compostela and the spinoff 3edata.

The project, in addition to promoting the recovery of the poplar groves of Granada through the creation of an Ecoproducers Group, promotes the creation of a wood processing industry and research into new materials for sustainable industrialized construction as a project to attract Next Generation funds within the scope of the Green Revolution promoted by the EU, which will be used in the construction of the first poplar structural wood building in Spain.