General Information
The island of Crete has been selected as a hot spot in the DESIRE project. It covers an area of 8313.3 kmē. The length is 250 km while the largest width is 56 km and the smallest width 12 km in the eastern part of the island close to Ierapetra city. Crete is a rugged mountainous island with high variation in altitude within relatively short distance. Due to its predominantly steep terrain and adverse climatic and bio-climatic conditions, the island is facing significant soil erosion problems. Actually, 79.5% of the surface area has slopes greater than 12% (Figure 1) and only 6.9% of it comprises lowlands with slope less than 6%.
Figure 1: Slope classes distribution of the island of Crete
Two representative parts of the island of Crete have been selected for detailed analysis of land degradation and desertification and for proposing techniques and strategies for combating desertification. More specifically one of the study areas is located in the south-western part of Chania prefecture covering an area of 71.971 hectares, and the other in the south-western part of Heraclion prefecture covering an area of 36.735 hectares. The two study sites are presented in Figure 2 and are designated as "Chania region" and "Messara valley". This selection was mainly made due to the fact that there is a contradiction between the western part and the central south part of the island, as far as cultivation practices and land degradation risk is concerned. The main purpose is to delineate the impact of different management practices in land degradation and desertification.
Figure 2: The two study areas in Crete
On the following map (Figure 3) the two sites are presented using the Google earth application background. The geographic extent of Chania region and Messara valley in WGS 84 coordinate system is presented in Table 1.
Figure 3: Overlay of the two km-files of the study area using Google Earth
Table 1: Geographic coordinates of Chania region and Messara valley in WGS 84
The participating local partner is the Agricultural University of Athens, Department of Natural Resources and Agricultural Engineering. The main language of the region is Greek but due to the strong tourism intensity of the island, Cretans use to speak other European languages such as English, German, French, etc.
