UNESCO declared the medulla as a World Heritage in 1997 to preserve the unique landscape that left the largest open -air mine in the Roman Empire. Since then, the international agency has periodically evaluated its state of conservation with a series of exhaustive questionnaires. In the last report, of 2022, asks for the risks that can be assumed for this territory unique the consequences of climate change. The patronage's response was overwhelming: they are not relevant.
In section 4.10.1 of its questionnaire, UNESCO asks how climate change and severe weather events can affect the territory. For example, large storms, floods, droughts, desertification, changes at sea level and temperature modifications. For all of them, the answer is always the same: “Not relief” (it is not relevant).
That eagerness to minimize the possible effects of the climatic crisis crashes against the tragic postcards that the landscape of the cords throw today, razed by a voracious fire that burned the most visited areas, including the archaeological classroom and several viewpoints, in addition to innumerable centenary chestnuts. But the consequences of fire unleashed last Saturday can even be worse.
This Wednesday, the University of León warned that the thermal shock and the loss of vegetation caused by the fire could condition the future and the preservation of numerous sections of the Roman hydraulic network, “which could be destroyed or covered.”
In addition, the Geologists of the ULE insist on the idea that they did not work properly in anticipating a situation like this, and point out that “the lack of a previous study of vulnerability will prevent determining the real impact of the flames.”
Despite the negative responses of the Board of Trustees to UNESCO's questions, the adaptation plan and uses of the medulla prepared in 2011 – now repealed – included in the chapter State of conservation and future evolution that “forest fires constitute an important degradation factor” and that should be “Preferred care object to articulate appropriate prevention measures”.
“A very sensitive material”
The professor of the School of Mines of the University of León, Javier Fernández Lozano, explains that the thermal shock produced by fire can generate physicalquimic changes on the blackboards on which the Roman channels were built, a material sensitive to alteration. To this is added the loss of a vegetation that for two millennia has fulfilled a double function: preserve the infrastructure and protect the slopes.
“Without that coverage and coinciding with the first torrential rains of autumn, the land is exposed to processes of superficial runoff and destabilization of the slopes, especially steep in the area of La Cabrera, conditioning the future and the preservation of numerous sections of the Roman hydraulic network, which could be covered or destroyed,” says Fernández Lozano.
However, the same day that scientists launched these warnings, the president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco said in an interview in La Sexta that the medulla will be “equal or better within a few months.”
Given what qualifies as “delicate situation”, the university, through the Geoinca Research Group, makes available technology, technical media and specialized personnel to perform an analysis of the damage and try to minimize them in the face of the conservation of infrastructure.
Evaluation and prevention error
One of the most obvious consequences of global warming is the worsening of the danger of forest fires. The extreme heat, together with the fall of moisture and the strong winds, are behind the proliferation of the so -called sixth generation fires that, on many occasions, exceed the capacity of the extinction equipment, such as Fernández Mañueco himself has declared that it occurred in the world heritage worldwood.
In fact, the frequency and intensity of extreme fires They have doubled in the world in the last 20 years. Precisely one Flash drought is behind the wave of simultaneous fires that Spain is going throughamong them, the fire that has carbonized the medulla. These sudden droughts, increasingly common due to global warming, quickly discarding vegetation and absorb soil moisture, which creates the necessary conditions so that any ignition unleashes a large fire.
Fernández Lozano recalls that from the ULE already raised to the Junta de Castilla y León the convenience of conducting a vulnerability study of the entire network, which would have allowed to have a previous diagnosis of its state. A study that now, recalls Fernández Lozano, would have been key to determining the impact of fire.
“The last time I was there, and it was not long ago, that looked like a jungle. They would have to have made pruning in advance,” says CSIC archaeologist Javier Sánchez-Palencia, who led the works that They resulted in the declaration of the former Roman gold site as a World Heritage Site in 1997.
The archaeologist missing prevention measures already implicit in the UNESCO report (United Nations Educational, Science and Culture Organization) that gave rise to the declaration as a World Heritage, a document that spoke of the need to have “sufficient human and technical means.”
