First report of the restoration Letur river
Thanks to the meeting in the first Bootcamp in Porto, Lot and Jose of the Soiltribes community of practice, became the seeds of the Green Barriers team, and started the first tree planting event after the flash flood of Letur, which devastated the abandoned area of Almazarán.
This first pilot project of Participatory Ecosystem Restoration consisted in the creation of a local network of volunteers and passionate people with ideas and energy to restore not only the the 400 metres of this first action, but the whole area of Almazarán.
Location of the project
The intervention was along 400 linear meters of both sides of the stream bed, covering an area of about 0.4 hectares.
The land is public, since it is in the border of the river, so was made with the collaboration and approval of the Confederación Hidrográfica del Segura and Tragsa, the company that was managing the physical reconstruction of the riverbeds.
Planting methodology
The participative plantation was made with volunteers in two days, first event was the 15 December 2025 with the participation of 10 volunteers, and the second the 1 February 2026, with 20 volunteers. Volunteers came from nearby villages, with some exceptions of people that travelled to come to the action.
The seedlings were planted in a hole with locally made biochar and a capsule of native microorganisms.
Each plant was protected with an innovative cardboard protector, called Cuidatree, held in place by two rods, without the need of removing it since it is totally bio degradable.
The plants were watered from the river after planting to ensure they took root.
Participatory Ecosystem Restoration
A whatsapp group is created with the aim of coordinate the actions, generate a team, and inform of the updates of the plantations, where local people is welcomed to join, and participate, with 40 members in this moment.
Whatshapp Group Link:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/HlljW1nArxB8SB0riCbRR2?mode=gi_t
Thanks to the team of Platoniq that helped us to start the Greenbarriers Asembly and process, where we will prototype a restoration community in Almazarán, that hopefully could be replicated in other territories.
GreenBarriers Process:
https://commons.soiltribes.eu/processes/greenbarriers
GreenBarriers Assembly:
https://commons.soiltribes.eu/assemblies/greenbarriers
Ecological Design
We selected the species looking nearby ecosystems, research in local knowledge, and historic ecological bibliography.
The species was classified in four different groups, according to their water needs and size, to allocate them with ecological consistence in the space available, in total, we planted 250 trees from the following species:
30 Salix atrocinera
10 Prunus spinosa
10 Celtis australis
40 Pistacia terebinthus
20 Sambucus nigra
20 Fraxinus angustifolia
20 Vitex agnus cactus
20 Nerium oleander
20 Arbustus unedo
30 Prunus mahaleb
5 Tilia phatyphyllos
5 Alnus glutinosa
10 Quercus pyrenaica
10 Junglans regia
20 Tetraclinis articulata
Biochar
Due to the big quantities of branches and wood that came with the flashflood, we decided to process in situ the material by pyrolysis to create Biochar that we used in the plantation.
Creating biochar is not only a carbon negative process, but also an amendment to the soil to enhance local microbiology of soil.
The biochar was made without special equipment with local available sand to cover the combustion of the wood to made the pyrolysis with a lack of oxygen.
Local media impact
The events was covered by local newspapers
First event:
Second event:
Media
Photo shared folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17TzJA4w12yGTkyX-NshjUl1X-zQ8KmLJ?usp=sharing
Video documentation (in spanish):
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