Municipality: Pontevedra Region: Galicia Country: Spain Website: http://www.xunta.es/portada Partner in charge of the site: CIF
Site characteristics
Altitude (m): 120 Topography: middle slope Orientation: NE Slope: 21.0 Hydrology: MIDDLE SLOPE IN THE RIVER LÉREZ BASIN, IN THE AREA OF THE ESTUARY CALLED “RIA DE PONTEVEDRA” OPEN TO THE ATLANTIC OCEAN South containment: 2 Soil type: CAMBISOLS Soil sub-type: Parent rock: acid to intermediate plutonic rocks
Climate
Average temperature (°C): 14.3 Average precipitation (mm): 1716 Number of frost days: 8 Reference period for climatic data: 1958-2007
History of the site
Lourizán Reinfforce arboretum (AR31) is situated inside the area of the Forest Research Center of Lourizán (CIF). The plot where the arboretum AR31 was established was previously occupied by a eucalyptus forest (mainly, Eucalyptus linearis) since 1976. The Botanical Garden was initially created as Lourizán Arboretum in 1943 and includes a Herbarium (50,000 sheets), the School of Forestry Formation and Experimentation and the Forestry Research Centre. Besides the gardens, there are some outstanding collections as the Conypheretum and Eucalyptetum, Castanea alive germoplasm, representative species of the Iberian Peninsula and trees from such diverse provenances as New Zealand, Australia, USA, Taiwan, etc. The CIF occupies 54 ha under a public property regime and then, permission was implicit to the use of the plot. The administrative organism Secretary to Rural Environment and Forests – Xunta de Galicia, is the responsible of the management and conservation of this place, executed by our own CIF staff. The location was choose because is a representative coastal area, with warm winter and humid weather, were most of the species and provenances could be successful and, also, because it was interesting to join together this experience with a lot of previous experiments in forest research from 1955 to today. Moreover, the access to the plot by other research institutes for further collaborative projects is guaranteed. Under a floristic point of view, is included in the Eurosiberian Region, in the Atlantic province, as a border point of the boundary between Eurosiberian and Mediterranean regions. The land belonged to Eugenio Montero Ríos (1832-1914) jurist, politician, university professor and President of the Minister Council, in 1943 was bought by the provincial government ‘Diputación de Pontevedra’ and since then was transferred to different public institutions, finally was assigned to Autonomic Administration, Xunta de Galicia, for forestry formation and research activities. The Palace of Lourizán, during the time Montero Ríos was the Prime Minister of Spain, became a meeting point for politicians, journalists and relevant personalities of that time.
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