Spanish Desertification Atlas Data on Population and Land Degradation

Spain's environmental data includes metrics on population in drylands, degraded land area, water stress, groundwater status, and water erosion estimates. The dataset, created by Jaime Martinez-Valderrama, is aggregated at autonomous community, province, or river basin district levels. It was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Correlate population_in_drylands with water_stress metrics to model human vulnerability to desertification.
• Map degraded_land estimates against groundwater_state data to identify areas of compounded environmental stress.
• Analyze water_erosion estimates across different river_basin_district or province aggregations for soil conservation planning.
• Assess temporal changes in dryland population and degraded land by comparing data across available aggregation levels.

Strengths

• Data covers multiple key desertification indicators: population, land degradation, water stress, groundwater, and erosion.
• Spatial aggregation is provided at three administrative/hydrological levels for flexible analysis.
• Published under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license for reuse.

Limitations

• The dataset is small at 2.4 MB, indicating limited row count or feature depth.
• Specific row counts, column names, and exact temporal coverage are unknown.
• Analysis is constrained to Spain, limiting geographic generalizability.

Provenance

Source

Data published in the Atlas of Desertification in Spain by author Jaime Martinez-Valderrama.

Collection Method

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Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated in April 2026.

Geography

Spain, aggregated at autonomous community, province, or river basin district levels.